Growing as a Culture of Peace (Prt 2)

I am continuing on the point that peace should not be the end goal to conflict, but rather that peace should be the means by which we respond to conflict and be the very thing we embody. I think people might scoff at this because we have an entire history of proving the enlightenment wrong about knowledge equaling right behavior. As James K.A. Smith says in his book, You Are What you Love, there is an enormous gap between what we know is right and what we actually do.  So how does one close that gap?

It may sound cliché, but the conflicts we experience externally are usually conflicts that began internally and we are witnessing the result. In the same breath, peace can also flow from the person who has internal peace because old thought patterns have been transformed into rhythms of humility and grace.  We Christians know this as the inner work of the Holy Spirit.  That sacred place where God is in search of us (and often us of Him) and we suddenly find ourselves found and reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:18-19). More shocking is that God then dwells with us.

The revelation is that there can be and is peace with our Creator because God says in His kingdom you count too and that He won’t count you out if you won’t count you out (Lk. 15:1-32). When you know that you count there is deeper understanding that we all count, so then to rage against someone else for our own vindication or claims of righteous indignation is to only diminish what is true about both of us and all of us.

I believe most Christians know this to some degree. Maybe many haven’t been able to put it into words and give it language, but the inner workings that made anyone want to follow Jesus in the first place was usually some internal revelation like this.  The problem is that this was the beginning of something really big and it soon became a distant memory for too many Christians. They return to life as usual internally and externally.

But, to follow Christ is to be formed into Christlikeness, also known as “spiritual formation” (Gal. 4:18-19). As Dallas Willard defines this formation, it “refers to the Spirit-driven process of forming the inner world of the human self in such a way that it becomes like the inner being of Christ himself.”[1] We are taking on the character of Christ in that we become, like Paul says, a people marked by peace and characterized by compassion, kindness, humility, patience and forgiveness (Col. 3:12-17). 

Being this kind of person can sound vainly wonderful, but the missing component is our cooperating with God in the work of self-emptying. This is primarily the work of emptying the self of all arrogance, hardened insensitivity and self-sufficiency.  To consciously be walking with God and learning to let those things go regularly changes how we think, feel and relate to everyone.

This is precisely why the mystics regularly practiced what is known as the “spiritual disciplines”. These are that habits of worship, prayer, fasting, simplicity, meditation, service, confession and so on.  Each one of these practices produces many things in our walk with God but at the top of the list would be the practice of unhurried listening to God, the practice of trusting God and the practice of loving God and neighbor. This takes the peace we so often experienced as new Christians and gives it much deeper roots and much more meaningful attachment to others.

So if you feel like your relationship with God and love for others has grown cold then this is a pretty good place to start, but to my main point, if the church is ever going to grow into a culture of peace and embody peace amid conflict, then spiritual formation must be practiced regularly and be part of how we disciple someone who wants to follow Christ.

Ideally I would suggest finding someone who can teach you this within your own church family.  But if that looks bleak, no matter what stream of Christianity you come from, you might just find that a priest (Catholic or Orthodox), Franciscan monk or nun, or protestant pastor in your area is receptive to teaching someone who wants to learn.  If you are not comfortable with that, then my personal reading suggestions for more on this are:

1.      Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline The Path to Spiritual Growth

2.      Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives

3.      Henri Nouwen’s Spiritual Formation: Following the Movements of the Spirit

4.      Richard Rohr’s Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi

[1] Dallas Willard. Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ (Colorado Springs: NavPress 1989), 22.

Growing as a Culture of Peace (Prt 1)

Banksy

Peace is probably one of the most important topics the church should be discussing right now. I say this not just because we have so little of it these days, but because how we understand peace set the parameters for how we view and resolve conflict, personally or otherwise.  For example, if we simply define peace in the dictionary sense it is freedom from disturbance, a tranquil state of being, or a state of not being at war. That alone makes peace an end goal with a lot of open territory for how one can arrive there. 

If a marriage is hurting from lack of communication and lots of disagreements you can just terminate it: get a divorce and file under irreconcilable differences and peace will ensue; if you have a friend, sibling, coworker, or someone of the sort whose relationship with you is centered only on them, their needs and based on seeing everything their way, then go along with it and you will never be without peace; if another country or people group is standing in the way of peace blow them all to hell so peace can be restored.  Of course none of these are good ideas, but they are where we tend to take them when conflict disrupts our definition of peace.

As an alternative idea, what if we stopped thinking of peace as the end resolution to conflict and make it the means to resolve conflict? And while we’re at it maybe we could stop seeing every conflict as a bad thing and become alert to the fact that it is necessary for alerting us to a need for change.   

Why would I say this? Because, when Jesus says things like, “forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12), and “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (Jn.14:27), peace is not the end goal because we already have it. We have God’s peace so when we read something like “Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children of God” (Matt. 5:9),  we cannot see it as peace being the final resolution, but rather peace being the way to treat each other and the means by which we do life together. 

Miroslav Volf (theologian) says it like this: “Inscribed on the very heart of God’s grace is the rule that we can be its recipients only we do not resist being made in into its agents; what happens to us must be done by us.”[1] To my mind this is the epitome of what the church should be, representatives of God’s grace and peace wherever we go.

Yet as the Kreiders have said, churches really do not describe themselves as being “cultures of peace” even though that was one of the good things being cultivated by the early church.[2] As far as I can tell the church now might struggle with even wanting to be such a people because we are more comfortable drawing lines in the sand that reinforce our stance against those we don’t support. Rather, what should be happening is learning to posture ourselves as a loving people who were and are recipients of grace and peace and therefore extensions of it. 

My point is there is a much better picture to this creation story we are in, but we have to insist on re-finding and refining it in our lives.  This is just the beginning of what needs to be said about this, which more will be coming in the following posts, but I want this to launch the conversation. And I want this to remind us to be aware that “the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus… make(s) you complete in everything good so that you may do his will…”(Heb. 13:20-21).  Peace is already present even amid our conflicts.

[1] Miroslav Volf. Inclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), 129.

[2] Alan Kreider, Eleanor Kreider, and Paulus Widjaja. A Culture of Peace: God’s Vision for the Church (Intercourse, PA; Good Books, 2005), 9-10.  

Robert Jeffress Trumps the Bible

A pastor from Texas, Robert Jeffress, recently said that he believes that the Bible, particularly Romans 13, gives Donald Trump the moral God-given authority to wipe out evil using whatever means necessary whether that be by assassination or war to topple evil dictators like Kim Jong-un.  He goes on to say that the only time we are to love our enemies and forgive is in interpersonal relationships, but he says the government is never told to turn the other cheek.  Here is a link to hear the segment in full (Robert Jeffress on Fox & Friends). 

First let me say this, if all of Jesus’ talk about not resisting an evildoer and not retaliating against aggressors and being forced to walk a mile with someone and praying for those who persecute you was solely for interpersonal relationships, then they had odd interpersonal social lives (Matt 5:38-45).  Call me crazy but this almost had to have been directly related to Jewish life under Roman occupation.  They were the ones doing most of the forcing and persecuting.

Second, Jeffress clearly needs some refreshing on the world surrounding Romans 13.  Aside from the fact that there is an inherent contradiction in thinking one can still be a good, loving Christian and stand behind state sponsored destruction of people, there is a bigger flaw. By Jeffress’ logic Christians of Rome should have championed Nero and the rest of the Roman government while they wielded the sword against those who they deemed evil.  By the way they deemed Jews and Christians as troublesome and evil.  Nero’s reign was the political-climate Paul was speaking into, and so my point is whatever Paul meant here it could not have meant what Jeffress thinks it does.

What I think Paul does here is continues his discourse from 12 in 13 about never vengefully repaying evil for evil. The Roman Christians could do that by refusing to act like the rest of the world who bought into the myth of redemptive violence especially against their own citizen-killing government.  It would have been plausible for Christians to want vindication and attempt assassinating someone like Nero themselves, but Paul is telling them to continue doing good no matter who is in authority over them. 

Paul’s point seems to be that the Church is distinct from the Government because the Church is to exist as an alternative community within the patterns of the world, namely sword wielding governments.  The only thing Paul does say about government is that God ordered and uses them to create some order (and I don’t mean "use" in a way that violates their freedom to make decisions, namely terrible ones).  God merely ordered them in as much as He allows the governments to keep having a place within the created order of the universe.  We also cannot forget that God says that world rulers were an entity working against His will (see 1 Sam. 8), so while governments will not be the means by which God sets things right, He isn't going to stop them from bringing what order they do manage either.

Unfortunately I believe Jeffress represents the voice of our larger Christian culture that has rejected the way of Christ to follow the way of the nation. That my friends will always find false-security in things like “fire and fury” and using threats to control others.  

Empire Baptized Review

I am reviewing a book this month! This is thanks to Speakeasy who sent it to me in return for an honest review, no matter how critical. The book is Empire Baptized: How the Church Embraced What Jesus Rejected 2^nd-5^th Centuries, and it is penned by Wes Howard-Brook (J.D., M.Div.). Wes is a professor at Seattle University. He previously practiced law, but now he teaches theology at SU, he works in a deacon formation program for the Archdiocese of Seattle and of course writes books, among many other things. As apprehensive as I am about lawyers writing books on Christianity, I gave him a shot anyway and he does not disappoint. 

Let me begin by saying that I have to consider this book to be an important contribution to the topics of early Christian history and the evolution of Christianity. The early Christian writers have been important voices to both the Orthodox/Catholic traditions and the many streams of Protestantism. Yet, Howard-Brook challenges their views from Origen to Augustine. While giving a critical analysis of several of these writers, he asks his readers to consider the idea that it was actually the internal workings of the Roman Empire’s religious, philosophical, social and economic structures that came to undergird their Christian formation, as oppose to the Jewish rootedness and culture of its origin. He argues very well that this is most evident through their (and now our) narration and interpretation of scripture and the subsequent development of our theologies and doctrines over the millennia. 

As a side note, for those who are up on the “New Perspective on Paul” and where it is going (by Sanders, Dunn, Wright and Co.), I felt this absolutely complimented that work as well. It too confronts faulty soteriologies and anthropologies that have been based on misunderstanding of the ancient Jewish culture.

Nevertheless, within this contextual setting Howard-Brook enters into a much needed exploration on the important themes of ecology/creation care, anti-Semitism, war and nonviolence, sex, hierarchy, social justice and other things that we Christians have notoriously mishandled. So, while I definitely tout this book as well researched history book and critical analysis, Howard-Brook also points directly toward the contentious issues that we divide over now and no doubt will continue to do in the future thus offering many points of relevancy.

It is also worth mentioning that Empire Baptized is a continuation of another book Howard-Brook had written titled Come Out, My People. In this book he seems to outline God’s leading Israel away from the “religion of empire” in exchange for the “religion of creation” throughout the Biblical narrative. I say “seems” because I have not read Come Out, My People, but he offers a brief recap in the forward. With that, I had little trouble keeping up with Empire Baptized, so I felt this was a good standalone book. With that said Howard-Brook does rest on interpretive assumptions about the Bible that I presume he worked out more fully in the first book which would be helpful for many beforehand, or at least something to keep in mind while reading this book.

            My only “con” for the book is not so much a flaw as much as a friendly caution. This book is geared toward an academic audience which I personally do not have problem with, but I know some will. Being of that genre and vocabulary it can at times feel daunting. This, however, is not to dissuade anyone from trying. In fact if I can get more people in my own sphere to take the time to work through it, I will. It is definitely a book worth having on the shelf for any who are interested in these topics and dilemmas.

Becoming You

One of the most unique aspects of human life, to me, is that our identity often begins pre-birth when someone else gives us the gift of distinctiveness in the form of a name and grants us belonging in the shape of a home.  Yet, as people grow and develop in the different stages of life we often deconstruct and reconstruct our identity sometimes for ourselves and often we receive it again from others.  Because of that our identity will take different shapes for better and for worse, especially if others have been at the heart of disfiguring it.

Nevertheless, identity is essential among communal creatures.  Think of what it is like, perhaps your inner desire, to have a place of familiarity where others gladly affirm your belonging. Think of the loneliness in its absence. Think of how it feels, the part of your brain that perks up, when someone says your name.  Think of what happens inside when you hear how you are being talked about, good or bad.  It shapes our self-awareness and how we relate to the world around us. It can aid in forming a fractured self-image in need of attention and healing, or it can build a healthy self-image that is not afraid of letting go of ego because our worth is rooted elsewhere. I say this to make the point that our identity is important, but again it is first and foremost a gift that we must receive, not some ideal projection of our making to aggressively pursue and protect. 

But, the conversation changes when those around us seem better at offering flighty labels to our personhood, which can either be an unattainable high ideal or belittle us as a person. The truth is people who struggle with their own identity also lack what is necessary to see the true identity of all the other people around them. So if we ourselves struggle to find it and all struggle to see it we must ask, who then should we trust to give the decisive say to our identity?  

Yes I am obviously going to say God, but here’s why.  If we stay attentive to the relational turmoil throughout the whole Biblical narrative we will see identity is a regular struggle for precisely these reasons. For instance, the Hebrew texts reveal the ups and downs of the formation of human identity and Israel gaining an identity and God trying to reclaim the world’s identity. In the Gospels there is a dichotomy between how Jesus indentified and related to others and how his traumatized, angry and retreating community identified and treated them.

The main point I want to draw from, however, comes from Ephesians. Here salvation is being reoriented for the church of Ephesus as a divine creation and gift that no one had any power to make happen, just as our own lives were never by our contribution (2:1-9). Verse 10 peaks by saying that the salvation of people is God’s workmanship, like an artful masterpiece, created in Christ to carryout God’s goodness in the earth as our way of life because our identity and location was always found within Himself. In fact the entire cosmos is located in YHWH. To be disconnected from this is to lose our origin and our ability to understand ourselves, others and the universe in the right context.  

When Ephesians says that we are God’s workmanship/masterpiece, I found John Berger helped me (indirectly) relate here.  Berger (art critic, novelist, artist, poet, prophet), in his 70’s BBC broadcast “Ways of Seeing”, made an interesting observation about the art we observe. We usually see art in the context of museums, art exhibitions, photographs, televisions and so forth which is fine supposing the art-piece is good in its own right, but we also need to remember that it is always outside of its original setting.  When an art piece is experienced outside of its original setting its meaning gets lost. This is because most art was never arbitrarily created, but was commissioned for a certain purpose within a specific architectural setting (e.g. churches, castles, government buildings, etc…). It was part of a story, a history.  Berger said, “With art, each image captures some memory from the interior life from the place it was made for, thus everything around the image was part of its meaning. Its uniqueness is part of the uniqueness of the single place where it is; everything around it confirms and consolidates its meaning.”[1] What a profound statement and a frightful one for those who interpret art amid a world that desecrates its meaning for the sake of things like advertisement!

            It is worth mentioning that Berger saying this then leads into a deconstruction and critique of the manipulating that can and does occur to art after being severed from its context.  He shows it did in fact form new interpretations of art (not to be confused with better) that come from manipulating its identity and giving it new surroundings, invented location. So if it is not already obvious this falls in line with what I am saying.

            We are at the epicenter of where God begins to set things right. God locates our identity in Jesus and in His incarnation reveals what we were always supposed to be; genuinely human (Isa. 2; Matt. 5-7). But with this God insists on giving us a new name (as opposed to the empire which assigns a number) as part of our new creational identity (Compare Rev. 2:17; 22:3-4; with 13:16-18).  See, like art we have been intentionally formed within a universe where our surroundings confirm and consolidate our meaning and in our new identity we take part in confirming and uniting with the universe’s meaning because it all belongs.

Therefore, this is an identity we do not get to make up, though we can perceive it and live in it, and we certainly do not get to demean another’s identity to prop ours up as more significant. It cannot be validated by our own accomplishments, rightness or ego because that’s a different game.  Truth is you are enough as you are and you cannot earn an identity which you were already given. All we can do is accept it as a gift and stop trying to actualize it through our rigged point systems. If we let the humbling call of God (who is love) define our identity (which He insists is in His likeness) we might just find ourselves within the loving wholeness of belonging.  

             

[1] John Berger. Ways of Seeing: Episode 1. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk May 10, 2017. 

Death Swallowed a Body and Encountered God: Happy Easter

Χριστός Ανέστη! Christ's Resurrection Icon

Let none fear death; for the death of the Saviour has set us free.

He has destroyed death by undergoing death.

He has despoiled hell by descending into hell.

He vexed it even as it tasted his flesh.

Isaiah foretold this when he cried:

Hell was filled with bitterness when it met Thee face to face below;

Filled with bitterness, for it was brought to nothing;

Filled with bitterness, for it was mocked;

Filled with bitterness, for it was overthrown;

Filled with bitterness, for it was put in chains.

Hell received a body, and encountered God.

It received earth, and confronted heaven.

O death, where is your sting?

O hell, where is your victory?

Christ is risen! And you, o death, are annihilated!

Christ is risen! And the evil ones are cast down!

Christ is risen! And the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen! And life is liberated!

Christ is risen! And the tomb is emptied of its dead;

For Christ having risen from the dead,

Is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be the Glory and Power, now and forever, and from all ages to all ages.

Amen!

-St. John of Chrysostom: Paschal Homily

Why Jesus Hates Fig Trees

So in honor of this week set apart to observe all the things that surrounded Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection (Holy Week) I believe one of the most unsettling verses might just be the best way to enter into it!

In Mark 11 Jesus and his disciples stroll into Jerusalem. Jesus, who is riding on a peace donkey instead of a war horse, gets a kingly welcome with palm branches and coats thrown over the road and the people confess him as the continuation of the Davidic kingdom (11:7-10).  Things might just turn out okay!  Except, the very next day Jesus does something completely un-peaceable and unpredictable. He curses a perfectly good fig tree when he found it had all leaves and no fruit! What’s more is that he does it on his way to indict the Pharisees and the temple for desecrating what was supposed to be set apart for God. 

I have to admit, for a long time I never understood why Jesus would curse a tree for not having any fruit on it (while he was hungry mind you) especially since it wasn’t even the season for figs (Mk 11:12-14). My initial thought was, gee I guess Messiahs are prone to smite when their blood-sugar is low, but as much as I like to insist on this as a valid interpretation that is not what’s happening.  This is actually something more akin to performance-art of the prophetic genre. And like performance art, which seeks to rejuvenate art after artists have become dissatisfied with the traditional forms of art, Jesus too was dissatisfied with some traditions mucking up God’s expressions. 

Therefore, interpreting symbolism is vital to our making sense of this scene. Consider the idea that a “Fig Tree”, especially in Jerusalem, is no more just a tree than the Bald Eagle is just an eagle in Washington D.C. (or anywhere in the US).  It carries enormous symbolism with it. Fig trees were an icon of blessing, leadership, provision, but most importantly, it symbolized the temple and its structure which itself was a sign of justice and maintaining order. We should then conclude that the fig tree is thematically tied to the following temple scene and thus stands as a symbol for God’s judgment on Israel’s “out of season” religious leaders.

In Tim Geddert’s commentary on Mark, he makes the point that Jesus was no more punishing the tree than he was the temple as neither did anything wrong, but the religious leaders were being unfaithful to God and neighbor (12:40) so it became a prophetic symbol.[1] Upon entering the temple, Jesus’ suspicions are confirmed (just like with the tree) the religious leaders are “all leaves and no fruit”[2]  We should infer some things from the elements pointed out in Jesus’ condemnation to see what their out of season fruitlessness means.

Here is the temple scene for easy reference (so scroll on if you don’t need it):

¹⁵ Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; ¹⁶ and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. ¹⁷ He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written,

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
    But you have made it a den of robbers.”

¹⁸ And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching (NRSV).

In v. 15 we have money changers whose job it is to exchange currency so that foreigners could both pay the temple tax and buy sacrificial animals. These were promised to be ceremonially kosher and goods of convenience from temple dealers. The doves were the less expensive, but acceptable choice for those who could not afford a sacrificial lamb.[3] Jesus is asking in what way is this a place of worship? It clearly cannot be because it is commercialism and commercialism is enslaved to and worships Mammon.

So also, since Jesus points out that this is a house of worship for “All Nations” (compare vs.17 and Isa. 56:7) they have probably managed to exclude the Gentiles from worshiping. Whether the temple leaders organized it spitefully out of nationalistic smugness or just for selfish gain, Gentiles were only allowed to worship in the outer court where all the transactions were taking place. Thus worshiping God in such a noisy market for the Gentiles would have proved impossible.  To add to this, Geddert says that other sources affirm that profit-taking was commonplace and dealers could charge inflated prices (even on the doves) from those who have made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and had no convenient way to travel with sacrificial animals.[5]  The temple had been made into a burden for everyone, but those who profited.

In fact Jesus’ condemnation and cleansing of the temple means that it was so corrupted and failed that it could never be the completion of God’s eschatological promise (probably also the reason in Jn. 2:19, Jesus tells them to tear it down and he’ll rebuild it). The temple as it was had become a “dry withered tree” (Mk 11:20-21) with no future.  This scenario should make the reader exclaim, then where is the temple that is the fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision?

It is this question that we should reflect on from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.  The fig tree is withered and can no longer draw and feed all nations, but there is the new Temple and he draws nations and exiles and captives and feeds them in the desert. The fig tree becomes the “lynching tree” of control, but this is the very tree that Jesus destabilizes and transforms into the communion table, the forgiveness tree, where bread and wine has been broken and poured out for all who will come.

[1] Timothy J. Geddert. Mark: The Believers Bible Commentary. (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 2001), 263-264.

[2] Ibid, 264.

[3] Ibid. 266.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.