The Good Samaritan and “Wokeness”

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Let’s talk about “wokeness” and the bible. When the teacher of the law asks Jesus “who is (εστιν) my neighbor?” in the well known parable of the Good Samartian (Luke 10: 25-37), we could talk at length about the social/power dynamics, or religious and ethnic discrimination, but before we get to that, let’s look at the end. Jesus changes the question in typical Midrash style and asks the teacher, “Who became the neighbor?” He doesn’t use the same verb as the teacher (εστιν), but uses the much more active verb of being (γινομαι) (here in the perfect γεγονεναι).

This changes the understanding of the command to “love thy neighbor” away from the neighborliness of obligation that is either individualistic (Kantian/Lockean) or even one with the clear demarcation of society as in Hegel’s Sittlichkeit–which focuses ethics to be in primarily in a societal realm. By changing the question of “who is my neighbor,” which implies reciprocity and societal rules/order, to “who became the neighbor” Jesus is subverting societal expectation and the very concept of individual/personal “rights.”

Now going back to Jesus’s decision to make a Samaritan his primary hero, we can see that this no mere tokenism. It is integral to the broader point that Jesus is making to the Jewish teacher of the law that the one who becomes the neighbor be a Samaritan. I’m sure you are aware of the racial implications of the “good Samaritan.” The Cottonpatch version did a good job communicating this to white Southerners in the 1960s by changing the story to the parable of the “Good Negro” (not so subtly calling out their racism). What is less well known, is the religious minority status Samaritans held among Jews. Samaritans were descendants of Northern tribes of Israel who were left by the Assyrians as too old/weak/poor to bother with and who married/had children with others from the Assryian empire.

They had already changed the worship of YHWH (see John 4) and altered it further by blending together their ancient Yahwehism with other Ancient Near East cultures. Thus Samaritan religion had some similarities with Jewish religion, but was not “pure.” They used similar terminology, claimed to worship the same God, but most Jewish people did not think that was true. A near contemporary parallel to the Jewish relationship religiously with the Samaritans for the Modern American/Western European would be a Christian in relation to a practitioner of Islam (a Muslim).

So, going back to the question Jesus asks at the end of the parable, before Jesus tells the teacher to emulate the ethnic and religious minority, how do we set that in our contemporary context? There is a subtle draw to adopt a modernist ethics pervasive in the Church today. While we are told to beware the dangers of “postmodernism,” ethically, philosophically, and theologically, the real danger to the Christian message as presented in the bible and throughout most of its history is found in modernism.

Modernist Ethics seeks to ground the authority for ethics in reason alone. It acts in terms of clear cut rules for what is and is not acceptable and believes these are arrived at through universal reason. It may vest that authority in something else, like the bible. It justifies doing so because that authoritative text is proven trustworthy. So a modernist Christian will accept the bible is the source for ethics because it is true. It is true because it is verified as such from the experiences of many, coherence to historical fact, scientific truths, etc.

This is behind the obsession with proving a Young Earth Creationist view of the world, insisting that Jonah was swallowed by a fish, not a whale, or that the Mustard seed is in fact the smallest seed. These types of concerns are modernist ones that fail to grasp history or differences of language in translation (especially of ancient texts). The bible, for its part, is not concerned with these modernist notions. That’s not to say modernism is always bad, just foreign to the world and concerns of the Bible. So we should not necessarily be surprised when the biblical worldview is conflict with the modernist one. Nor should we try quite to hard to conform the Bible to our Modernist sensibilities.

The fear of “woke-ism,” too, is a modernist one. It is a fear that we cannot readily identify the boundaries of which group is where. Critical Theories (CT) like Critical Race Theory (CRT) are extensions out of modernism, but are not bound within modernism. Integral to CT and cRT work is challenging the prevailing narrative as (for instance with CRT) too white-centric or too male dominant, etc. CRT challenges the modern categories of race as artificial, and demands we listen to the story of others and take them at face value, at least initially, prior to making judgment.

CTs are not completely anti-modern, though, as they tend to back up claims with a methodology that incorporates hard data and statistics, often focused on economic realities, but other metrics as well. Still, they challenge the idea that everyone fits into neat boxes.This is especially true when one begins to discuss Intersectionality or “Identity politics.” It subverts the clear cut narratives. On the one hand, the fear is understandable. If I can’t clearly define exactly what the rules are, I might unintentionally break them.

The reality is much more complicated, though. There are no rules, at least not ones with clear cut boundaries as in modernist ethics (like you get with Kant and Hegel). This is uncomfortable. Returning to the parable of the good Samaritan, then, we see this play out. Jesus asks the teacher of the law “who became the neighbor?” This implies first, that while each act and incidence might be self-contained, “neighbor-ness” is not a permanent status, but a goal to be striven after, over and over again.

Second, the boundary for who this includes is beyond the scope of what we would normally consider. By all accounts, the Levite, the priest, the other characters were the neighbor, but they did not *become* the neighbor. Only the Samaritan did. So the question this poses to us, then, is not “what are my (ethical) obligations?” But rather, “how can I demonstrate love, kindness, neighborliness today?” By making the conversation about maintaining the societal order and status quo, questioning the notion of “wokeness” as valid, opponents to CRT in the Church excuse themselves from asking the second and more difficult question. They excuse themselves from hearing, listening, or seeing the “other,” from seeing the one who “fell among bandits,” from understanding their own relationship to a society that creates bandits in the first place, or allows others to fall victim.

An obsession with dismissing “wokeness” makes for an easy life that is not concerned with loving the down-trodden, but instead with excusing one’s actions and justifying oneself. The dismissal of the work as “wokeness” accepts the goodness of the kingdoms “of this world” to the neglect of the Kingdom not “of this world” (εκ του κοσμου).

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Critical Race Theory (in brief)

I apparently made a splash by confronting Owen Strachan about his use of Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a convenient bogey man for anything that made him uncomfortable. He uses the term, suggesting it will destroy the church, in a vague way (with how it destroys the church even more vaguely). So I asked him to define the term. I will admit I as a little snarky with the way I asked him, but this is not the first time he has used the term as a vague catch-all, and I had previously asked politely with no response. This time, I received a response rather quickly: I was blocked.

As I noted on Twitter, I am not bothered so much when anyone blocks me. I can be irritating. I know that about myself. I am bothered, though, that Strachan purports to be an academic and a public theologian. You can’t be those things without some thick skin. And if you are going to throw a term around, labeling it a massive threat, and condemning anyone who utilizes it, you better be able to say, with some precision, why. He can’t. In the interest of fairness, I decided to give a brief description of the term. Also in the interest of fairness, I wrote the following without any additional research. As someone who claims to use it, I thought it best to use simple recall to explain, because I thought that is a reasonable ask from someone in a public forum. Even if he were to respond by giving me a quick response that lacked some precision and then made the caveat that Twitter is insufficient to truly discuss it, that would have been an appropriate response. So in response I gave the following definition:

CRT addresses racism by presenting evidence of both the current and historic disparate treatment of non-dominant ethnic groups through quantified or quantifiable data and information and advocating for radical societal change. (3/4)

— Dr Trey (Medley) (@MedleyTrey) January 27, 2021

The rest of this is continuation of that thought

History and Nuance

Critical Race Theory (CRT) began in 1970s in Law Schools in the US as a way to explain why the gains made during the 1960s began to stop or stop having much of an impact. It is a Critical Theory in that it is grounded in sociology theory of Karl Marx. This does not mean it is necessarily communist, socialist or even (actually) Marxist. Marx argued that present conflicts were the result of material actions taken in history. That is, you cannot explain most disparities in societal treatment through appeals to God (only), genetics, or fate. Instead, people took real actions in history that resulted in the present disparities and conflicts that we observe today. This is not controversial. It is also a Critical Theory because it grounds its claims in quantifiable data. So CRT: a) acknowledges that there are real disparities and conflicts, b) uses data to show this, and c) argues that these disparities and conflicts are a result of historic actions. That’s what makes it a Critical Theory.

Some assumptions are built in here: 1) racism is real; 2) it’s a result of history and 3) we might be able to change it. In the course of its application, most Critical Race Theorists began to suggest that the reason relatively little progress has been made in Civil Rights since the 1960s is because racism had become enmeshed within the fabric of society, largely through certain key institutions. This is not to say that there are not racist individuals. Instead, it argues that the best way to address the disparate treatment of certain ethnic populations is to exam the institution/systemic racism, rather than only addressing the exist of White Supremacists. If, rather specific individuals being responsible, the continued unequal treatment of non-white ethnic groups was the result of systems/institutions, this also meant that non-racists or even non-white ethnic groups might be participating and incentivized to uphold systems and institutions that result in racist outcomes. Again, these are not imagined outcomes, but backed by data.

An Example

Let’s take, briefly, the example of policing that was highlighted this past summer. A Critical Race Theorist will examine instances of violent crime in predominantly white and Black neighborhoods (the existence of such “ghettoization” and its connection to redlining practices is another example of systemic racism), and notice immediately that police respond significantly faster and with more arrests when violent crime occurs in white neighborhoods than Black neighborhoods. However, they will also notice that non-violent crime arrests are substantively higher in Black neighborhoods than in white neighborhoods.

Further they will find that police treatment of Black suspects vs white suspects reveals further disparities, with higher incidence of violence used on Black suspects than white suspects in apprehension regardless of the severity of the crime. Additionally, they can pull the sentencing disparity for convicted white offenders (lesser sentences) vs Black offenders (harsher sentences) for the same offences.

A CRT theorist will also look to the way that laws are passed which indicate disparate treatment. For instance, in the 1980s, crack cocaine, which was bought, sold and used more frequently in Black communities compared to white communities, had additional laws and significantly harsher sentencing guidelines than powder cocaine, despite the fact that they are essentially the same product, only ingested differently. Yet powder cocaine was much more common in white neighborhoods (one could demonstrate that powder cocaine was used at a higher rate in white communities than crack cocaine in Black communities). Both of them paled in comparison, at the time, to the heroin epidemic.

Historically, the practice of policing in the US is different from other parts of the world. In the US, policing has its roots in methods and practices not only in the principles of Robert Peele (from Britain), but also in officers tasked with finding and arresting runaway slaves. Further, police were used to enforce segregation, including in brutal attacks on non-violent protestors.

All of this would lead a Critical Race Theorist to conclude that the problem is not racist police officers or judges (though that may still be a problem), but rather than something about the justice system in America is fundamentally flawed that produces this disproportionate outcomes—outcomes that have ripple effects on the communities of these individuals, which are rooted in the historical development of that system. The result is that some sort of drastic change must take place.

This has led to 4 different calls with regard to policing (not a comprehensive list). The first is police reform: something needs to change within policing as it exists. The next is “defund the police,” which advocates in redistributing funds for police from simply not allowing police to buy military grade weaponry to reworking funding toward mental health and community services to the more extreme version that comprises the 3^rd call: “abolish the police.” This suggests that policing in America is so fundamentally flawed that it needs to be stripped down entirely and reimagined as something else. The most extreme version of this is the 4^th call the: ACAB movement. The ACAB movement suggests that any institution whereby one person operates as an agent of the state to enforce laws upon another as their fulltime occupation with result in all of those agents necessarily acting unjustly either because unjust/racist individuals are the type of person most drawn to those positions, or the level of authority vested in those institutions necessarily corrupts those people. It is important to note that these are not all the same people. These are discrete individuals and groups that often have their own heated disagreements between themselves, but they do agree one issue: something is wrong with the Criminal Justice system in the US.

“White Guilt”

CRT is useful because it presents hard data with an accompanying historical narrative that can act not only to demonstrate the problem of racism, but provide an explanation for its cause. Once both of those are demonstrated, advocates have a stronger position from which to argue for system change, whether in education, housing, the loss of inherited/generational/family wealth, etc.

Because of the historical narrative, it is evident that white Americans have historically been the primary driver of racial/ethnic disparities. It also becomes apparent that ethnic whites have a certain level of privilege that comes from these disparities. This is not saying that other privileges do not exist, nor is it saying that all white people are culpable for the current state of the world, these are mere statements of fact, not value judgements. A prima facia, naïve, and bad faith reading of CRT would suggest that “white guilt” is the expected response, but it is not. While it may be true that white people are not necessarily morally culpable for this state, white people, as those who are in a state of privilege do bear some responsibility to address the issue. Failure to recognize or own up to this responsibility could make one morally culpable, but there is some leeway here.

The Church

In a Church setting, some objections are to the idea that CRT is Marxist and therefore anti-Christian. I hope it is clear by this point that such is a bad faith reading of CRT. Many other objections are rooted in the idea that either: a) white culture/domination of culture is synonymous with the church, b) racism is not actually an issue/we’ve moved beyond it or c) changes to the current culture are upsetting to those who have (often unknowingly) benefited from the culture and they do not believe they bear responsibility to change it.

Most other objections are more or less permutations of these or a form of White Nationalism. One potentially valid objection is that Critical Race Theorists do not necessarily accept limits/bounds of authority over actions and activities. While in practice such boundaries would be unlikely have very much impact, it remains true that those who work in and for the Church do recognize the authority of Scripture and, potentially, the Church as having an authority that may act as a boundary to certain types of actions. Again, it is unlikely that this would result in materially different action other than to limit some of the most extreme applications of CRT. The way that most seminary professors, clergy, and churchwomen and churchmen employ CRT recognizes these other sources of authority.

My own application of CRT finds its most ready use in my Christian Ethics classroom. In particular, with deep seated roots in Black Theology and Liberation Theology, I make particular effort to engage with the voices of Black, Hispanic, Womanist, Mujerista, and other theologies when examining ethical topics. It also has an impact upon topic selection. We will discuss racial disparities in housing and policing when we discuss justice. We will talk about the role of civil disobedience a bit longer when discussing the relation of the Christian to the State. This does not mean I have bowed down to CRT. Rather, it means that, as a scholar, I have kept myself aware of trends and methodologies, examined their usefulness as appropriate. As a Christian and a Theologian, I look to see if they accord with Scripture and the actions of God in history. Clearly systemic sin and racism are issues addressed in Scripture. Just read the entirety of Ephesians (to those who say institutions/systems can’t be sinful, I invite you to consider the preface to the armor of God where Paul declares that “Our Battle is not against Flesh and Blood.”)

That’s a rundown, off the top of my head, of CRT: what it is, and why I use it. I hope this can be an example of sorts. I am by no means a CRT expert, nor anything approaching a sociologist. I do, however, bristle at anyone who declares a theory/method off limits, especially when the one making such a declaration cannot seem to articulate the specific reasons why such a declaration is made. The reason so many predominantly Black churches, Black pastors and teachers are leaving the SBC over its most recent declaration condemning CRT is not because they are all Marxist. It’s because, when present with a reasoned, evidenced based approach to use as one tool among others to address the actual problem of racism, the SBC seminary presidents (and many of their faculty) said that to even begin to address the issues of racism in the country, to even consider looking at things from a perspective that was not “white,” was tantamount to heresy. They didn’t even look at it, but listened to the ill-informed, bad faith readings of non-experts and took the word of these white men as gospel.

Love and COVID-19

“You do whatever you need to do to protect your family”

“If you need to protect yourself, that’s fine, just don’t try to force me to do anything”

“If I’m willing to take that risk what’s the big deal? I’m not asking you to do so”

“Everyone just has to do what they think is right for themselves.”

Last week, I shared about the fear that is driving a lot of responses to the current Coronavirus situation. The quotes above are not made up, but ones written or spoken to me or someone I know very closely. I want to make clear that I am not living out of fear, but I will (again) be addressing the thought processes behind these types of statements. At the end of last week’s post, I noted the biblical mandate to love one another is the exact solution to fear. That’s what I’m hoping to explore in this post. Besides sounding like a twentieth century Spanish novel, I firmly believe that love is the appropriate response during this pandemic time. So what does that look like.

Not me, but you

The first thing I would like to note is that, for many of us living in free and open societies, we have a view of individual rights as supreme. I do not mean to cast aspersions on the idea of how important individual liberty from government is. This is, no doubt, behind the strong reactions against government orders to wear face masks or to stay home.

But that’s not the way of Jesus.

The Jesus way is one of putting yourself second. “Don’t do anything for your own desires or wishes” writes Paul to the Philippians,

“Instead, humbly put others ahead of yourselves, for you are no longer meant to look at your interests, as individuals, but to the interests of others. In these relationships, one to the other, unite your mind with Jesus Christ, who, though he was fully God, didn’t think this was something to grab onto for his sake. Instead, he emptied himself completely, becoming fully a servant, by taking on the image of man. Being fully man to any who would examine him, he humbled himself still further, obeying authority to death–yes even a death upon a cross.

It is for this reason that God raised him to the highest place, giving his name a high place also, that at Jesus’s name, every knee would [humbly] bow, in heaven, on earth, and even under the earth, and every tongue proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, [solely] for the glory of God the Father.”

Philippians 2:3-11

I do not mean, by pointing to this passage, that one should blindly follow the state as though such allegiance is what it means to love your neighbor. Instead, I urge you look to the above passage and consider how we might best love our neighbor during this time. It is possible that what the state asks of us, and what God asks of us, happen to coincide. The bible clearly lays out the division between state and the Kingdom of God, while still acknowledging the authority of the former. But that’s not the point.

The point is that your own personal rights, no matter how valid or justified they are, are always placed behind the rights of others. So I ask the question again, how do we love one another? How do we drive out fear? By putting our rights behind those of others. We consider their values first.

The Whole and the Individual

A lot of reactions are going around about different aspects of the government response to the present pandemic (I will state again that it is real, it is not part of a conspiracy, and it is serious). One strain of argument I have heard countless times is “Why can’t I decide to take the risk for myself to…go back to work/go to the store/not wear a mask/not socially distance?” This is usually backed up by some declaration of “you do what’s right for you.”

Except, that’s not how life together works. If you live within a society, you are automatically bound to other members of that society. In the same way that within a

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family one person’s actions affect everyone else, so it is within a broader society.

The reason that fire departments exist as a municipal entity is because one neighbor’s home on fire is a threat to every neighbor’s home. There was a time, in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, where private fire departments would only hose down houses whose members had paid their fees. The results were disastrous, including, among many other issues, the Great Fire of London.

We should think of public health in much the same way. Your decision not to socially distance, doesn’t just affect you; particularly so when there is a long incubation period and asymptomatic transmission as is the case in the current situation. It affects the whole.

The same issue goes for masks. Cloth masks do very little to protect the wearer from getting a disease. They do something, but not much. To protect the wearer you need a properly fitted N95 mask (and most people don’t know how to properly wear one). That’s not their point. The reason that masks are common in many cultures is not because the wearer is worried about getting a disease, it’s because the wearer is concerned with not spreading the disease.

A cloth mask doesn’t mitigate all spread of disease. It does effectively remove a lot of water droplets (part of normal speech and breathing) that can hang in the air and carry the disease (but because it does not prevent all such spread, it only works in conjunction with distancing). However, masks do almost nothing to protect the wearer; and they only work when a significant portion of the population wears them, washes hands frequently, and maintains distance from those with whom they do not live.

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I do not wear a mask because I fear for myself. I do not wear one to look out for my own family. I wear one for you. Even if you refuse to wear one out of some sense of freedom, thus putting my family I risk, I will continue to wear one. Because it is the loving thing to do.

A PR Problem

My wife, who has asthma among other health factors and is thus at increased risk of death from COVID-19, pointed out, amidst her frustration, that the politicization of mask wearing seems largely due to a PR problem.

In Houston, where I live, local authorities mandated that masks be worn, but offered no reasoning as to why it should be done. These local authorities are mostly from the Democratic party. The (mostly Republican) state authorities saw this, and immediately issued an order superseding the one of local authorities to not require face masks. The result was that the order in place to wear masks lasted only a couple of days, ones where the police openly acknowledged they would not enforce it.

The result is that many are actively refusing to wear masks or socially distance for the sake of making a political statement. They want to make it clear that “the government doesn’t tell me what to do.” Such persons are correct that they have every right to do so. But that is not love.

Nor are they correct in giving an individualistic account of things where “you do what you need to do and I’ll do what I need to do.” What you do affects me and what I do affects you. It is unavoidable. Perhaps the appeal should have been made on the basis, then, of love.

As my wife continued, she noted,

“It’s frustrating because the same people who are actively pushing back on these rules are the same people who would give you the shirt off their backs. The ones who would not only lend you their truck, but help you load and unload it and not ask for anything in return. A lot of these people are the exact ones who would be willing to make sacrifices for others if they were only asked in the right way.

“They need new PR. The message should have been

‘We’re Texans. Texans care for people. Texans help people. Right now there’s this virus and it is putting your grandma at risk. Not just your grandma, but everybody’s grandma. Wearing a mask is one of many things that can help our grandmas and lots of other people too. It may be uncomfortable, but we’re Texans and we can do this. We’re Texans and Texans help people’

There would have been open carry protesters, with masks on, handing out masks to everybody without one as they walked into Kroger and HEB.”

So I’m asking you, as a Christian, to show love for one another. You show love by staying home, by wearing a mask and staying distant when you have to go out, and by taking this seriously.

I absolutely understand the desire for many to get back to work. I have many close to me whom I know are struggling financially and unable to work. There are understandable fears and worries related to that. At the same time, though, is it worth the risk not just to that person, but to countless others? The failure of our society to care for the financial well-being of its citizens does not mitigate the responsibility to care for one another’s physical well-being. That is a false choice, and a dangerous one at that. Should something be done? Of course. How we do that, though, must be considered from a position of love, not financial well-being.

We show love by putting others ahead of our own rights, thoughts and desires. We defer to others.

Praising with the Saints

For this reason, as we are fully encircled by such a cloud of witnesses, having set down every weight and the easily entangling sin, we should run with endurance the course laying before us.

Hebrews 12:1

This week, I’m going to explore a bit more the theme I introduced last time. Last week, I focused more on what worship means across physical space and briefly mentioned the concept of worshiping across time as well. I’d like to press into that latter point.

Witness

Certainly, this seems to be part of what is at play in the Hebrews passage here as the author lays out the claim that we should run course given to us, presumably the course of our lives that God has called us to run, in large part because of the many saints who are now cheering us on now. Giving weight to that interpretation is fact that Hebrews 11 lists several of the members of that great cloud.

To be sure, these weren’t exceptionally faithful men and women, though we often think

them such. The witness to faithfulness that they are is not a witness to their own faithfulness, that would make little sense in context. Rather, they are witness to the

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faithfulness of God. Jephthah, a man whose most well known act is to make a vow in the midst of faithlessness, and Abraham, a man known for lying about his wife twice, for not believing God would start a nation through him and was considered righteous for believing God once, are not men known because of their great faith. Instead it is because God was faithful to them. They are witnesses to the faithfulness of God.

In the same way, you are part of that cloud. When the Author of Hebrews describes the cheering crowd of this cloud of witnesses, you, the believer, are simultaneously the athlete for whom they are cheering, and also part of that crowd. The language of cloud encircling you is very specific. It is not just a stadium around you, it is one into which you are fully enveloped. You are in the very presence of these people and they are in yours. While we are presently unable to be present incarnationally with the saints of our local community, for when God justifies you by faith you are made a saint, we are nevertheless spiritually, present with the saints throughout the ages.

Language to our Prayers

Not infrequently, I will pick up the Book of Common Prayer. To be sure, I come from a non-liturgical tradition (Baptist). While I did attend an Anglican Church during our time in England, it was what might be termed “low church.” So the book of common prayer wasn’t absent, but it wasn’t something you needed to read from every service. My affection for the old Anglican prayer book goes back much further than this anyway.

The book of Common Prayer was originally the work of Thomas Cranmer in the Sixteenth Century, however it was, in many ways, a collaborative effort. Over the years the book has been slightly adapted and modified, the language has been updated, but its core has remained largely unchanged. The book has been used for almost 500 years among English speaking saints.

I went to an interdenominational divinity school. The faculty member with whom I became closest was the Revd Dr Wilton Bunch, who was also an Anglican Priest. I had started attending, in addition to my Baptist Church services, some Anglican early morning prayer services at a fairly high church Episcopal Church in College. During my time at divinity school, I continued the practice by attending the midday Anglican service.

One day, while talking to Dr Bunch about Anglican traditions and the book of common prayer. I commented on the beauty of its language. I asked him what he liked most about it. He looked at me and said “The most wonderful thing about it, I think, is that it gives a language to your prayers when words fail you. When you are too full of sorrow or too full of joy, we can reach for the book and find a language, one that has been spoken by many before us, to help us express our inner most feelings to God.” This has stuck with me over the years.

We read the book of Psalms in much the same way. It’s easy to think of the Psalms as a hymnal of sorts, indeed some Psalms likely were sung. But it’s interesting that there are more Psalms of lament and imprecation (asking for God to bring calamity upon enemies) than there are of praise and thanksgiving. At their root, the Psalms are prayers of Ancient Saints. This does not exclude them from being songs as well, but when we read them as giving us a language to our inner hearts, they come alive in new ways.

This past Sunday the church I attend (virtually for now) began with a recitation of the Apostle’s Creed, some version of which has been recited in churches since at least the second century. We concluded, as we do every week, with the Doxology (also known as the Old 100), finding a different way to join with the saints in a song sung for three hundred years (first sung in 1709). Perhaps your church finds other ways to connect with host of Saints from decades, centuries or millennia past.

Regardless, as you get up and go about your day, perhaps not straying from the house even once today, as you pray or read, or even think about God, in a very real and very important sense, you do not do so alone. You are encompassed and enveloped in a great cloud of witnesses. You too, bear witness to faithfulness of God, as Christ was faithful to you, not only unto death but beyond it to new life. So praise God with all the saints.

 

Two or More are Gathered

“For where two or three gather in my name,  I am there in their midst”

Mathew 18:20

After the Ascension of Christ, one of the big questions that presses the Church is, “Where is Christ?” Those from a more reformed perspective might immediately state “seated at the hand of the Father.” If you grew up in more Baptist or Wesleyan/Arminian circles, your answer might be “in my heart.”

Personally, I’m inclined to agree with the reformed perspective, despite much of my theology leaning in the Arminian direction. When I started my PhD, the movement that was beginning at the King’s College London Theology department was known as “Transformative Theology.” It began, at least for some, with that same question: where is Christ? I never joined the project, really, in large part because of my disagreement over the response to this question. Christ rose as a bodily human, albeit one with a transformed body. He ascended still in that body. Whatever else you might say about heaven or paradise, whatever your view of life after death, there is at least one human in the presence of the father, Jesus Christ. The incarnation, and even moreso the resurrection, represented a change in God.

Not a change in the nature of God, the language of Philippians 2 (μορφη) makes it clear that the change was in the appearance and representation of the Son, not his fundamental nature. But this change, as I understand the scripture, was a lasting one that continues on today. So if Jesus is physically embodied as a particular human, and as that human seated at God’s right hand, or standing before the throne, he remains in heaven. So when posed with the question of “Where is Christ?” I want to turn the question to also state that “His Spirit is with us.”

The Trinity

The doctrine of the Trinity is an interesting doctrine. On the one hand, the early Church Fathers were very clear to note that the Son is not the Father is not the Spirit. On the other hand, they also want to affirm the doctrine of circumincession, the idea that each person of the Trinity is interpenetrated by each other person of the Trinity while also remaining distinct.

The way this distinction is usually maintained is by saying only the Father begets, only the Son is begotten, and only the Spirit proceeds (whether the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son or from the Father and the Son was one of many of the precipitating factors behind the split of Easter Orthodox Churches and the Western Churches). To that distinction I might only add that only the Son is incarnate. True there is some discussion of God taking on a temporary human form, such as when YHWH visits Abraham a year prior to the birth of his son with Sarah or when Jacob wrestles with Elohim by the Jabbok river at night, but the kind of full embodiment and lasting incarnation seems unique to the Son.

Regardless, the connection between the three persons of the Trinity is somewhat fluid. Augustine, among many others probably first by Gregory of Nazianzus, referred to it as a kind of circle dance (περιχωρησις). Each member of the Trinity inhabits the space of each other member of the Trinity without assuming the identity of that person of the Trinity. The fundamental entity (ουσια) exists as three fundamental realities (υποστασις) turning and spilling one into the other. So when Christ declares at his departure that the disciples will receive the Holy Spirit, in a very real sense, the Spirit is also a real presence of Christ. So while it is certainly correct to say that Jesus is “seated at the right hand of the Father,” it is also as correct to declare that Jesus is “within my heart” by the power and presence of the Spirit.

Where is Christ?

This brings us back to the quote above. I have long considered the above passage a reason to gather together as a Church. Of course the Bible presents us with many reasons to gather, but one of them, I thought, was that there needs to be at least two people together in order for Christ to be there two. Indeed, Matthew 18 seems to speak at length about the Church and its power. But I think to narrowly focus on physical proximity misses something. And, in an age of social distancing and the (understandable) censure of large gatherings, where the location of Christ matters.

Surely physical presence is important. If it were not so, God would not need to become incarnate in the the person of Christ. When this is over, I will enjoy being physically present with so many others, there are many whom I look forward to hugging (and I am not a hugger). But the physical presence is not what this passage is about. By the Spirit, God is always with the Christian. So much so that the Spirit often prayers and intercedes on our behalf when we are unaware (Romans 8:26). So we have the presence of the Spirit even when we are alone.

Instead, the more narrow passage where this is located is discussing the work of the Church, not the gathering of the Church (that’s important, but addressed elsewhere). Instead, as the Church comes together and meets in one Spirit about some work, so does Christ also join them in the same Spirit. Whatever we bind, he will bind, whatever we loose, he will loose. God in Christ is in the midst of our work, of our worship, or our prayer. So, as you pray alone, feeling isolated from others, know that as the Church prays with you, so also there is Christ, in your midst. In the midst of your loneliness, join the prayers of the Saints (among whom you are now counted) and feel their presence along with the presence of Christ.

The gathering together, then, is not restricted by either time or space. If you are gathering individually in your homes, but around the same worship, you are not alone and Christ is in your midst. If you are reading through the Book of Common Prayer, or through a passage of the Bible, you are joining with saints throughout the ages. Where two or three are gathered, even across distances of time and space, there is Christ, in the midst of them.

When Exile Doesn’t End

“Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people”
says your God
“Speak comfort to Jerusalem,
and cry unto her
that warfare is ended,
that her iniquity is pardoned,
for she has received from the Lord’s hand
double for all her sins.”

A voice of one crying out:
“Prepare, in the dessert, the road of the LORD;
make straight a highway for our God.
Every valley will be raised.
every mountain and hill will be made low;
the rough will become smooth and the rugged become plain.
And the LORD’s Glory will be revealed,
and all will see it together
for the mouth of the LORD has declared it.”

Isaiah 40:1-5

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

The season leading up to Easter is known, in liturgical traditions, as Lent. During these forty days Christians fast from something. Usually you hear people saying they’ll give up one item or habit, such as chocolate, or sleeping in rather than an outright fast, but still a noticeable shift. It’s meant to recall other significant periods of forty. Forty days of fasting that Jesus experienced between his baptism and temptation, forty days of rain upon Noah’s ark, forty years of wandering and waiting in the untamed lands between Egypt and Canaan. It is also meant to recall the period of exile in Babylon. Here, it was not forty, but seventy years of exile. Exile to pay back the land its Sabbath that had been neglected and forgotten.

When Easter ends, the fasting should stop, there is great celebration. In more liturgical traditions (such as Roman Catholic or Anglican churches) they might not use the word “hallelujah” from Ash Wednesday until Easter. So when it reappears in the church, it’s a big deal. Celebration, rejoicing. Christ has come back from the dead, laying death down in its grave! The time for fasting is over! It’s time for celebration and feasting, a fore-echo of the wedding supper of the lamb.

This year, many hundreds of millions, if not billions, experienced a taste of some form of fasting or exile, if not necessarily voluntarily, due to the now ubiquitous term “social distancing.” Still, it may have been made more bearable for some as it seemed appropriate for Christians to be more secluded, to spend time struggling, and to have more isolation during the period of Lent, even while we wish and pray the circumstances were more voluntary and less dire. But now, Easter has come. Shouldn’t this fasting and exile be over? Shouldn’t we be coming out of homes, seeing and touching, interacting, and playing and dancing? Shouldn’t the exile of businesses be over and done? Shouldn’t I be able to go to a restaurant, or to a movie theater, or to a coffee shop, or library, or classroom? Why isn’t the exile over?

The bible has a lot to say about exile. During graduation season, which this year will be more than a little different, many seniors receive cards quoting the prophet Jeremiah “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper and not harm you, plans for bright hope and a future.” The greater context for this passage is, of course, that this message of hope and good will is delivered on the eve of exile. None that could hear and understand it would return back to that land. They would die in exile. Many of their children would be born, grow old, and die in exile. Knowing this, Jeremiah goes out and buys a parcel of land. “I’ll be back for this” he declares; but Jeremiah is never seen again once exile comes.

In the New Testament, after the resurrection, the early Church waited for the soon return of Jesus. They heard his words that “I go to prepare a place for you. If I go, I will come back” and waited…and waited…and waited. The delay in Christ’s return, it seems, caused something of a crisis. This is likely behind Paul’s admonishment to the Thessalonians to continue working as they wait for the return. It may even be a large part of the reason John wrote his letters to the seven churches in Revelation. The people were stuck between Easter and the end of exile (and exile under Roman Emperors renown for their persecution like Nero and later Diocletian, no less). The Resurrection had come, Jesus had ascended, but still they waited. This period, where the tension between the already present and still coming Kingdom of God is felt strongest, continues on today. As citizens of another country, we Christians live in exile, one that has not yet ended. The message for those in exile is one of hope.

The book of Isaiah spends roughly 39 chapters hammering at the people to turn from their sin to avoid exile. In chapter 40, Isaiah changes his tone and audience. The prophet begins to speak not to those who lived prior to exile, but to those who have come through the other side. His opening words are “comfort.”

Opening words are often important, especially in ancient literature. The Iliad begins with “Rage, rage of Achilles” signifying a major theme that would be that hero’s undoing. At this critical shift, the prophet’s words to the people are “Comfort.”

It’s important, I think, to acknowledge that Isaiah wrote this prior to the end of exile (prior, even, to the beginning of exile). All throughout the years of laboring and waiting and wondering when or if it would ever end, the people of God could look to God’s words of “Comfort” to “my people.”

And so, as this exile feels a bit more acute with the onset of isolation, quarantine, social distancing, shuttered businesses, lost jobs, financial strain, and so much death and mourning all due to a virus most of us scarcely understand, we can still look to these words: “Comfort, Comfort.” God, though not seen as expressly, closely and intimately as before, is still active. He is still working. God is preparing a straight, level, even and therefore swift path in the dessert. All will see it the Glory of God because God Himself has declared it will be so. And on that glorious day, God will bring comfort.

“In this world you will have trouble” Jesus assured his disciples as his death drew near, “but take heart, I have overcome the world.” So in your own exile, take heart, and hear the words of comfort. This is not the end. This is the tension and sorry that comes with anticipation!

Everybody needs to calm down about the Blood Moon (especially Christians)

I didn’t really believe it at first, but there it was, right on my Facebook feed. Someone talking about how the lunar eclipse that happened on Tuesday. Or, in their terms, the “blood moon.” I don’t really blame them, there are people who like to stir up hysteria and they make very convincing arguments with nice rhetoric. But they are mistaken about it, and usually don’t really care how often they are wrong (and if you look at the track record of the sorts of people who cause these hysterias they are almost always wrong). Nor was simply talking about the moon a problem. I mean everybody was talking about it. This was one of the clearest and fullest lunar eclipse of our lifetimes, and so it is a rare opportunity to view the moon looking almost entirely red. No, the problem was that the talk focused entirely upon a discussion of how the end of the world is about to happen at any minute. Now it may be the case that the end of world really is about to happen at minute, but it has nothing to do with the “blood moon” and here are three reasons why:

1. This is not the first lunar eclipse and it won’t be the last

This point is really pretty obvious. It is true that most ancients and medievalists thought the red moon or “blood moon” was a bad omen, but they thought that because it occurred periodically. However, when bad things followed such an event, it was really just a case of confirmation bias. That’s a phenomenon where you only pay attention to observations that confirm your already held suspicion. It’s not proof, it’s selective observation. “But this one’s different” I’ve heard and seen people say. Well…

2. This lunar eclipse is not really that different

It’s different in the sense that it looks a lot clearer and more obvious than most lunar eclipses we will likely witness in our lifetime. But it’s not different in the sense of paying attention to specific dates and times, etc. Do you know who set about creating calendars and such? People did. They are a social convention. Now, it is true that they’ve conformed generally to some external phenomenon, like the revolution of the earth around the sun, or the lunar cycle (note: the current Jewish Calendar is somewhere between the two). Still, it is ultimately a human invention. The Holy Days enacted in Scripture are an example of God accommodating his revelation to us. At least that seems to be the opinion of Paul in the 2nd chapter of Colossians (NIV):

¹⁶ Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷ These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. ¹⁸ Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. ¹⁹ They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

In fact, the obsession with timing specific days and alignment with the planets as somehow an omen is not routed in Christianity. Instead, you would expect to find that sort of thing in Astrology and Paganism (both ancient and modern or neo-paganism).

“But” someone will object “what about those bible verses?”

3. Those Bible verses don’t necessarily mean what you think they do

There are, by my count, exactly three verses of the bible that refer to a red moon. And one of those is a New Testament passage explicitly quoting an Old Testament passage. So let’s look at that one first.

In Joel 2, it reads:

²⁸ “And afterward,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.
²⁹ Even on my servants, both men and women,
    I will pour out my Spirit in those days.
³⁰ I will show wonders in the heavens
    and on the earth,
    blood and fire and billows of smoke.
³¹ The sun will be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood
    before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. (NIV)

Now that doesn’t sound so bleak. I mean, it does call it a “dreadful day of the Lord,” but the Hebrew text uses words in different ways than we do. I mean what’s with the prominence  of “Fear of the Lord” in Proverbs. Does that mean we should be scared and hiding from God, or does fear mean something else? Does “dreadful” mean something else? This becomes particularly clear in the context of the chapter. Immediately prior to this section, the prophet Joel describes the restoration of the land and provision from God, and immediately after Joel notes that all who call upon God will be saved. That’s not very bleak at all. In fact, if we look to the New Testament, we see how they understood its fulfillment.

At the beginning of Acts, immediately after the outpouring of the Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost, Peter gets up and starts shouting that this very passage has just been fulfilled. After all, the Spirit is being poured out on all of the church, not just an individual (as had been the case in the Old Testament). What’s more, he quotes the bit about the sun being black and the moon being blood during what, by all accounts, seems to be a pleasant day (people are outside celebrating this festival and no one is terrified). There’s no black sun and no red moon. What gives? It could be that the black sun and red moon mean something else entirely.

One more passage before I come back to that. In Revelation 6 we have the following appear:

¹² I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, ¹³ and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. ¹⁴ The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. (NIV)

It’s always interesting to me how different people treat the book of Revelation. (Sidenote: pet peeve of most biblical scholars: putting an “s” on the end of Revelation. If you know one, try it out and watch them squirm a little before apologizing). Everyone talks about taking it “literally” but what they mean by that varies.

-Revelation mentions that there will be two prophets against the city of Babylon? Well then, we better look for exactly two men who are prophesying against a pagan city, bonus points if that city is actually named Babylon.

-Revelation talks about a beast rising up out of the sea, a third of the stars falling from heaven? Well, I mean it’s not a “beast” but a person. And those stars are demons. Clearly a metaphor.

-Revelation mentions Jesus standing at the door and knocking? Well that is not bound to a specific time period in any way shape or form. Come on, give us some credit.

Here’s the problem with the above. How literal one takes Revelation depends upon how literal the one doing the reading decides to take it. And it usually is a personal choice, with little to no respect (or even awareness) of the genre in which the book was written. It’s read like a modern book, and one that the reader knows based upon a gut feeling (that gut feeling is not the Spirit, by the way. The Spirit is expressed in the full body of believers known as the Church). So we read it “literally” when it is convenient, and dispense with literality any time it is convenient or interesting to do so. That’s a problem. Revelation is a hard book to understand. I don’t claim to fully comprehend it, but while I’m willing to admit that, I do understand it on some level.

So what’s going on here?

Well John, the author of Revelation, is very adept at blending into Revelation and referencing a wide variety of Old Testament symbols. He doesn’t do so explicitly (partly because that would violate the genre in which he’s writing), but it is permeating by the Hebrew Bible. Given that the only reference to a red moon found in the Old Testament is in Joel, we should probably see if there is any overlap. For Joel, the use of the images of a black sun and red moon were indications of the end of the world. Not because Joel thought there natural occurrences would actually foretell the end of the world, but because this was an already established motif. Other cultures sure seemed to think that, but Joel didn’t (or, at the very least, Peter quoting Joel didn’t believe that). They are merely a more poetic way of talking about the end of history.

That fits pretty well with Revelation, but it doesn’t explain why Peter references it in Acts.

It helps if we understand that Peter was a Jew, not a Gentile Christian. As such, he had certain expectations about how the world would end. During the first century, this included a belief in the “resurrection of the dead.” Peter, and all the early church, wholeheartedly believed that Jesus was raised from the dead. For the early church, then, that meant the end of history wasn’t only eminent, but already present. The end of the world had come. Indeed, one question that 1-2 Thessalonians and Revelation are all trying to deal with is how the end of the world could have so clearly arrived, and yet the world not be over yet. It is then that the church began to make sense of Jesus’ statements that “A time is coming and is now here.” This is two Kingdoms theology. The end of the world has come, it has come in the Kingdom of God, which is the Church as it should be. It is at war with the kingdom of the world. Yet, in light of the resurrection of Christ and Pentecost, the kingdom of this world has already lost to the Kingdom of God. The end of the world has already happened. It’s coming, yes, but it’s already here. Maranatha!

Why “Noah” may actually do more good than we admit

First things first. This is not a practical joke. I am making a serious claim about the movie “Noah” as a cultural phenomenon (not necessarily about the movie itself). So, full disclosure: this is not a review. You can read a good review from an evangelical perspective (with links to many more) at Christianity Today. Also, this is not even really a comment on the content of the movie. I get it, some people find it very questionable. Noah was a righteous man in bible, and isn’t shown as one here (actually, he is said to have found favor first, and only then described as righteous. The author of Hebrews (ch. 11) very heavily implies Noah’s righteousness is a direct result of this “favor” from God, not the other way around, something very much in keeping with Pauline theology). But this isn’t about that.

There’s also some debate about whether this is even a Christian themed movie. To be sure, Aronofsky likes to ask very big and very deep questions in his films, but these tend to be more about the nature of being human and how we relate to each other. The Bible, in contrast, is not (fundamentally) about people, but is about God. It’s written to people, but it’s written about God. But this isn’t about that either. This is about the impact that media has in our very visual culture. So here are some reasons that “Noah” may have a more positive impact on the culture than other Christian-themed movies.

1) People who aren’t Christians will go to see it

Say what you will about God’s not Dead, or other such movies. The truth is, very few who are outside of Christianity will ever consider going on their own (and not as a favor to a friend). The same is not true of “Noah.” Why? Because it has already sparked so many conversations about it. Conversations drive people to explore. In contrast dogmatic answers drive people to shut down and stop engaging. One is much more effective than the other and fostering genuine searching.

2) People are talking about it

Like everywhere. You can’t seem to avoid talking about it, or reading about, or seeing it somewhere. Everyone has an opinion about this and everyone (at least in the US it seems) has heard about it. This is sort of a spin off of number 1, so I’ll leave it at that.

3) They are actually pointing people back to the text

Here’s something that bothers me about many (but not all) Christian movies: they don’t actively encourage people to read their bibles. Sometimes there is a note and the beginning or end (not always), but often there is not. Even where there is, who actually reads those and thinks, “ok, I’m going to do that”? And even if you did, did you remember when you got home? People want to be entertained and anything that takes them out of that mindset is very hard. This is why I was very encouraged to see this:

That’s an ad for the movie appearing in the New York Times. Let me say that again: that’s an ad for the movie. Yet they included in their ad, under no real obligation to do so, a link that (if you were reading on a phone or tablet) you could click and then immediately download the entire bible. What’s more the “bibleapp” is specifically designed to encourage more reading of the bible than just handing it to someone. This is fantastic. I don’t really care if you see the movie or not. They are pointing people directly to the source material outside of the movie-going experience. Not only that, they have removed virtually all barriers to reading the bible. Do we not believe that the bible is powerful, transformative and redemptive? Anytime someone is pointed back to the revelatory witness of God’s redemptive work in history, I am excited. That has a lot more potential to foster change than virtually anything else we do.

In the end, I don’t really care if you see the movie or not, but I do think we should, at the very least, be ready to engage in positive conversations about what people have seen. Again, I’m not saying you should say you liked it if you didn’t, but if someone who is not a Christian is excited after having watched it, redirect that passion back to God and God’s word (encourage more conversation). The last thing we should do is try to squash that enthusiasm right off the bat with diatribes against its accuracy. This is a rather unique opportunity here, let’s not waste it trying to show how right we are and how wrong everyone else is.

But what do I know? Let me know what you think?

UPDATE: It looks like the film has substantially increased the number of people reading the bible:

#NOAH news: Bible Gateway pageviews to Gen. 6-9 last wknd were ↑ 223% over the previous wknd! http://t.co/dBJHxSM77C @CTmagazine @KateTracy3

— Bible Gateway (@biblegateway) April 1, 2014