The World Exhausts its Rage

This love of God for the world does not withdraw from reality into noble souls detached from the world, but experiences and suffers the reality of the world at its worst. The world exhausts its rage on the body of Jesus Christ.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics.

Torturing Reality

Since switching over to Netflix from Blockbuster I've only received one movie through the mail, a movie every American should watch: Taxi to the Dark Side. My first reactions were the feeling of being crushed, angered, and a desire to change change the status quo for politics. Often I get so frustrated with my fellow compatriots and myself for our short memory. With a new president to distract us, all the talk about torture and these secret war prisons have in the least subsided to a whisper.

Torture is disgusting in every form and should be regarded as an enemy of humanity, an unnecessary evil. It transforms our imaginations as US citizens (35% of the population sanctioned torture AFTER seeing pic's from Gitmo).

Politics has become a matter of using and manipulating language to create a reality so that people remain ignorant about reality. As I've mentioned before, I believe the most patriotic act a person can do in this climate of phobia and manipulated reality is to call awareness and repentance to our country's ills and brokenness. Torture is a crime against all of humanity, even the perpetrators.

Something I've been wrestling with since I've began to understand Political theology and Slavoj Zizek is the pressing question, how do you bring about a new political order within the old politic? As the documentary I just watched points to, the Cheney/Bush administration seems to have done this in eight years to an extent. Under this administration the US defied the Geneva Convention and the USA Constitution by (re)defining the terms and at other times propping security and safety over against "the self-evident truth that all men are created equal."

So is this the best way to bring in a new political order? Having a powerful administration that manipulates the people through false records and ambiguous language?

I would hope that this isn't the only answer. It could be the real solution is found in the cross, in the broken body of Christ that recreates humans in the image of a given and estranged God, uniting the isolated and creating a body given to all. The church is a political body by its very existence, thus it must be first faithful to its calling to serve and suffer, while bending reality toward God's love and justice.

Listening to the Victims in a Recession's Racial Dvide

One of the greatest perversities growing out of our recent economic collapse and recession has been this ever growing sense of reverse racism. This idea that blacks voted Obama into office as some sort of savior, to rid the USA of white power and replace it with black power, and open the gates to illegal immigrants by providing them a free ride on the backs of white business and money. One naturally thinks of the republican congressman Joe Wilson's outburst last Thursday during Obama's health care reform speech when Obama stated that no illegal immigrants would be provided coverage under the bills in question.

Well, since this recession that inevitably happened under a black president, many Americans who have held power in this country ever since their distant family stripped (read: raped) the natives of it have felt threatened. What's at stake for white culture is the false dream and comfort of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" given to them (us) by powerful corporations with little to no disregard for human life. Wealth built off the backs of others, just like the olden days...but exported of course.

In a NYTimes op-ed piece writers Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammad named The Recession's Racial Divide, illuminate the reality behind the fear that the black community has won a "dictator and, in one image circulated among the anti-tax, anti-health reform “tea parties,” he is depicted as a befeathered African witch doctor with little tusks coming out of his nostrils. When you’re going down, as the white middle class has been doing for several years now, it’s all too easy to imagine that it’s because someone else is climbing up over your back."

At the Moltmann/Emergent conversation I just came back from one of the quotes that has stuck with me was something like, "those guilty of oppression, but want to enter into the truth of life must listen to their victims, because they can tell you who you truly are."

Never mind the fact the loan offices were encouraged by certain lending institutions to persuade black preachers to hold wealth seminars by providing a small donation to churches who did so, never mind that these same employees often referred to subprime loans as "ghetto loans" and minority customers as "mud people." We could talk about how it was the white culture that sold the black culture a false bill of goods, or that black unemployment is 8.2% higher than white unemployment.

Instead hear the words of the oppressed who have fallen on inexcusably hard time:

“There is no middle class anymore,” ... “just a top and a bottom.”

It’s not easy to get people to talk about their subprime experiences. There’s the humiliation of having been “played” by distant, mysterious forces. “I don’t feel very good about myself,” says the teacher in “American Casino.” “I kind of feel like a failure.”

The conclusion is poignant yet lacking:

So despite the right-wing perception of black power grabs, this recession is on track to leave blacks even more economically disadvantaged than they were. Does a black president who is inclined toward bipartisanship dare address this destruction of the black middle class? Probably not. But if Americans of all races don’t get some economic relief soon, the pain will only increase and with it, perversely, the unfounded sense of white racial grievance.

Is all this article is is a call for economic relief? While this is an important and worthwhile conversation what we need is call away from fear politics and a culture obsessed with power, driven by bigotry, and that has no place for real, constructive dialogue. What we need is to confront this unfounded sense of racial grievance and quit scapegoating Obama, the poor, and the "other."

What we very well need is a call to the cross, to suffer and give up our American dreams of power and wealth for American dreams of a society of care and responsibility for one another, a society of real democracy and pluralism, and society founded in the reality that "truth is found in unhindered dialogue (Moltmann)."

Moltmann, Session II, Day 2

Crucified God:

Moderated by my friend Ann Pittman plus some other folks, Danielle Shroyer, John Eaton (vision community church, NY), (common table)

• DS- life changing book, made sense of soteriology and what happened on the cross.
• Perspectives for questions and moderation- pastoral & life
  
• there is no answer to suffering, b/c we wont accept any explanation. Resurrection is the answer, but there is no explanation for why you must die or suffer. all explanations are wrong and unacceptable.
• we don't want to have an answer that would bring us to peace with suffering, but if we feel the presence of suffering Christ next to us or in us that he shares; then we have a consolation that we are not alone.
  
• God will bring to a good end what he has begun in the human person- i believe that. JM
  
• How can God let these evil things happen?
  
• Where is God? is God here. But people critique God. So do we blame this question on philosophy and Liebniz. "comes from stoic philo: if he is omnipotent and good, so he cant be both, only one." This comes from grk. philo, not from Israel or God of JC.
• not only defend Jesus sympathy, but also the bereavement of the Father. If JC was true in saying my god, why have you forsaken me..then father is forsaken by Son. Two sides of triune one, suffers bereavement as we suffer forsakenness. this is a consolation.
• vulnerability of God- teaching presence of JC, instead of a God apart from JC. All God talk must come from and be centered in JC.
• "If it weren't for Jesus I would be an atheist like the other people in my family"
  
• looking at history, not convinced that God has everything under control. but looking at nature, etc...would never have occurred to me that there is a loving being. ONly convinced that God is love through Jesus. Don't like talk about a god, there are so many evil gods.
  
• people sometimes are disappointed by a God that suffers with them instead of pulling them out of the situation. how does the suffering God give us hope.
• first suffering God is compassionate God. God is there in your distress, never far away, but suffering with you. On other hand, the consequence of death for Christ was new life, eternal life. So i trust that the God who bears and has compassion on me will bring resurrection and new life. Suffering on one hand, resurrecting, triumphal God.
• Too make a point you must be one sided: in ongoing dialoguew ith others, you must be one-sided or you will kill the debate. so the more i think about, the theology of the cross must end with a theo of resurrection. i learned this with Paul...in Romans...how much more is grace than sin, resurrection than crucifixion.
  
• TJ- continuing line of theodicy and questioning the validity of the theodicy question: "atheists are closer to god than most theists, b/c they are arguing with God constantly."- Volf. Did moltmann meet christ and back into theism.
• JM- only believes in God of JC. His God becomes my God. theism is general understanding of transcendence that there is a higher being.
• types of atheism:
• Protest Atheism- Ivan Karamazov- Dost.- Bro Karamazov- "i have nothing in God in heaven, but I have rejected that there is no justice on earth." This type of atheism very pop. after war.
  
• another type of atheism- banality- dawkins, etc.
  
• the theodicy question is" if there is a god why is there evil." best answer is there is no god. then question of why is there evil collapses. So keeping god in question, keeps the conversation on evil alive.
• you can live without God in your life, but you will miss out on a lot of the liveness of life.
• Dawkins has another word. For him, genes. genes are not altruistic, or egoistic, but parts.
• protest hope (DS)= anticipate, transcend the limits of reality into the realm of possibility, anticipate the earth on which righteousness will dwell. so every piece of righteousness now is an anticipation that forms a new earth, an everlasting earth.
• how do we do this, resist and give hope: "one follows the sermon on the mount."
• resist capital punishment,
  
• the call is not only to pray, but to pray and watch. open your eyes to God and see what is a contradiction to God. and dont close your eyes and see the new world. pray with open eyes.
  
• early Xns were called atheists for refusing to serve roman gods/polity.
  
• two crosses in early Xnty: Golgotha of JC, one is a dream cross of Constantine. since that time we ahve had two crosses in beginning. Many crosses we see in Xn nations, buildings, etc is the cross of Const.
• Saint George- changed from martyr to dragon killer. old symbolism of Xn empire that has worked until present day.
• I agree with Anabaptist we must go back to origin to find new future of Xnty for the world, back past the Xn imperialism.
  
• 2 Pet. 3:13- HOPE
• Atonement theories- substitionary? fuller? victor?
  
• based on crucified God? not sure, identification theory, in that God identified with godless and forsaken aspact of humanity on the cross..so the atonement happens as we identity with Christ on the cross. Double, bilateral identification. Does this economic transaction takes place? Very appealing that God suffered and was tempted, not just nice tory, but walked in our shoes and when we identify we his suffering thats atonement - Tony Jones
• Moltmann response-
• Christology of solidarity. suffers with us// second- suffers for us, the guilty. both sides belong together. For us...reconciling suffering. but must see both sides together. given up for our sins and raised for our justification. whole process is justification.
  
• forgiveness of sin on hand, resurrection into new life on the other. (justification is both)
• another point- on one side- tradition of justification of sinner, forgive and reborn. BUT what about the victims of sin? God is righteous for giving justice to those who suffer. justification of victim is perhaps first act, in practical terms...sinners who've become guilty of their victim only have a sort memory if they have one at all. but those who've suffered always remember. so if you are guilty, and want to enter into truth of life, listen to victims b/c they can tell you who you really are.
• sacrament of repentance: confess, change mind, then make good that you do good evil as much as evil that you've done. but there is no sacrament of justification for the victims for what they have felt. they must overcome the feelings of revenge, etc from suffering the evil at hands of others. Then they must be alleviated and given a new self confidence, which victims don't often have- then the end, they must have the divine key- to forgive.
  
• Jail of Birminham- MLK= teaching the victims to forgive the perpetrators.
  
• Love- helpful about your work, re-frames and thinking in new ways of old things: power struggles.
  
• in love of life, you risk disappointment and be ready to suffer with and or for others, and be ready to feel them dying....to feel or bring in their dying inside of you.
• "fear in west, we talk about the cross in a personalized way so that it is only FOR US. Jesus died just for me to get somewhere. IN CG- all creation finds a place for redemption." DS
• talk to us about creation redemption- we lost cosmic dimensions found in Col and Phil. That christ died for redemption of universe. even cosmos needs salvation.
• universal salavtion is about: not that all humans will be saved; but that the UNIVERSE will be saved.
  
• Christ became human so humans and whole cosmos might become place where God dwells, and by this will be deified.
  
• important to see that at end, all embracing power, not just only salvation of my soul or my personal salvation and rest of world can go to hell...but in the end there will be restoration of all things in Christ. this is according to pietist, german tradition...the restoration is bringing back all things in the end. resurrection is all about restoration of all things.
• Modern experience of ecological crisis- we need this cosmic dimension.
• are you a Xn universalism or would you rather be called something else
• "im afraid 'im not a universalist, b/c there are perhaps some people i dont want to see again. but god may be a unversalist, b/c God created them and may want to see them again."
• universalism is not about to speak about all humans, but all of the universe.
• I don't want to go to heaven, angels have home in heaven. i want to be raised on earth and live on new earth where justice dwells. and in the end God will be all in all, that is heaven.
  
• Luther once said, on treatise for preparing for dying...don't look at hell in destiny of others or for self...but look at hell in wounds of Christ, b/c Christ suffered. so in wounds of christ, you must look if you want to talk about hell.
  

My God, my God why have you forsaken me

Here's a video I created for our Good Friday worship service that centered on the 7 last sayings of Christ from the cross. My text comes from Matthew 27:46. Although it's not necessarily Resurrection appropriate, Happy Easter nevertheless! Maranatha!

Sermon on Psalm 147: Praise. Praise?

I read these words in Psalm 147 and even before I get to the second verse I have to stop and ask, what kind of world did the Psalmist live in?

“Praise the Lord. How good it is to sing praises, how pleasant and fitting!”

Last Tuesday, I drove the church bus to the airport with Ahmed, an Iraqi case manager for the Texas Refugee Services. We met and picked up an Iraqi refugee family: a mother who knew some English and 5 children who spoke only Arabic.
We loaded the bus with their 7 bags before heading to their new home: the Villages of Lamer, a low income housing on North Lamar. These 7 bags represented the little bit of home they could bring with them to this strange and foreign land to puzzle their lives’ together. 7 bags don’t seem like much, but as Ahmed informed me, Iraqi’s tend to bring a lot. I guess a lot of luggage is 7 bags when compared to the one or no bags of African or Myanmar refugees bring.
At the Villages we found their apartments. The small third floor apt where the mother and three youngest children would reside, and the smaller apartment where the older boys would live. Each semi-decorated apartment was disheartening for me to walk into. This wasn’t home.
But it wasn’t the loneliness of these scantily decorated apt’s that broke the family, but rather the distance. As I drove Ahmed back to his offices, he told me that the boys were distraught that they’d have to be so far from their family in the complex…the complete opposite side.
Didn’t the Psalmist know that our world has wars and violence that tears people from their homes and places them in fear, discomfort, and brokenness. Wars that violate innocents and destroy the ability to praise.

Was the Psalmists world so different from ours where people’s hearts are filled with fear because of the loss of jobs, the deep grief over the loss of a son at the hands of a tragic accident or suicide, or the confusion over the loss of a parent or child due to sickness or cancer?

Praise God. Praise God?

Do we praise God because he’s some sort of narcissist who commands and needs our adoration. Does God demand our praise out of his own superficial vanity?

If the Psalmist is emphasizing praise as an imperative to ignore our world of suffering and pain or to reinforce Gods vanity, then maybe the atheists, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are right, our ancient book leads us to mere delusion.

But we don’t have to guess at the world of the Psalmist. We do know some things. As Ann mentioned a few weeks ago, our current Book of Psalms is actually 5 books placed together. And in this final 5th, where Psalm 147 resides we can infer that the community that would read and sing these words had experienced the harshest of tragedies imaginable for an Israelite.

The Southern Kingdom of Israel, the indestructible Kingdom of God’s Temple presence in Jerusalem has been conquered. The Israelites have been sent out into exile and the Temple destroyed. It’s truly amazing that the Jewish faith still exists to this day.

See the normal procedure in ancient Mesopotamia, was to change gods if you were conquered, because that meant your god was weak or false. What should have happened in this moment of defeat and exile, is that the Israelites should have given up on YHWH who allowed them to be conquered for Marduk or Baal.

OT theologian Walter Brueggemann distinguishes the Psalms in three categories: Psalms of orientation, disorientation, and reorientation.

Psalms of orientation praise God for how the world works, and how God blesses humanity, especially his people, how life works.

Psalms of disorientation or Lament Psalms, have God’s people crying out in their suffering and pain, these are about how life doesn’t work.

Finally, Psalms of reorientation are where God makes possibilities new, and recreates the broken world so new life is possible in the midst of exile, destruction, cancer, the loss of jobs, broken relationships, and despair.

The Psalm from our Psalmist tonight is one of reorientation: the possibility of new life.

With exile and destruction on his mind, and possibly with its marks on his body; the Psalmist declares in the foretaste of hope that God builds up Jerusalem, gathers the exiles, heals the brokenhearted, binds the wounded.

Flannery O’Connor puts words to this experience of praising God in the midst of situations of despair, pain, and oppression: when she says, “grace comes sometimes like a kick in the teeth, leaving us broken, wholly unable any longer to deny our need.”

Grace is a reminder that we need God, and dependence on God is faith. So praise in the midst and messiness of life transforms and shapes our faith’s ability to respond and with a new orientation see God and our situation differently.

Praise in song and music has historically empowered oppressed people’s faith, from the inside to the outside: from despair to hope, from captivity to freedom. One thinks of the power of African American spirituals.

Cornell West, in the documentary about modern day human slavery and trafficking, Call and Response, says:
“The music itself coming out of, especially black people in America, but of course its true for voices all around the world, is very much about this freedom; freedom which is spiritual, so when George Clinton said, ‘Free your mind and your ass will follow: the paradox of freedom is you would have, you have to experience the foretaste of freedom before you become part of a freedom movement.”

God wants us to praise him because God wants to free the world. God wants us to be free from sickness, despair, hate, and loneliness.

We need praise to know the appropriate response to suffering and injustice. Praise grounds us in faith in God, so within our situations of pain, neglect, depression, and violence we can have a foretaste of new life, of healing, of resurrection.

We do not praise God in ignorance or naïveté, but we praise God in solidarity and hope that love and justice will prevail, that peace will come, and that every knee will bow in an overwhelming response to God’s overwhelming love for us.

As Henri Nouwen wrote:
“Worship, to me, is constantly to say, “Yes’ to God’s love; to say, ‘Lord, I love you too.’ All of our life should be worship. Every occasion in our time should be an occasion to say, ‘Yes, I love you too.” That signals a change of heart.”

Praising God in the midst of the brokenness of life and sin, equips us with the appropriate response. Praise is the paradoxical tool of love that forms us for action and activism.

Praise is the paradox that allows us to affirm that grace can come to us in the ugliest of situations, so that when we cry out: “My God, My God, Why Have you forsaken me,” we stand in solidarity with our Lord. We are able to pick up our cross and know, as Bono has said:
“God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.”

Let us pray:
Praise God, for God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son.

Praise God, for God so love the world that he gave.

Praise God, for God so loved the world

Praise God, for God.

Praise God.

Amen.

Good Friday

In Christianity the cross is the test of everything which deserves to be called Christian. (p. 7)

Christian identity can be understood only as an act of identification with the crucified Christ, to the extent to which one has accepted the proclamation that in him God has identified himself with the godless and those abandoned by God, to whom one belongs oneself. (p. 19)

Christian identification with the crucified Christ means solidarity with the sufferings of the poor and the misery of both the oppressed and the oppressors. (p. 25)
-Moltmann, The Crucified God

Picture of Brazilian sculptor Guido Rocha's art revealing that Christ really did suffer. via.

Worship as Solidarity

I've been mulling over worship the last few weeks, ever since Brian McLaren visited Truett to talk about the challenge of radio orthodoxy. In the hour discussion, Brian shared some lyrics from this song.

Then a week later I read in Jonathan Wright's The Mission of God that mission creates praise and vice versa. And tonight I read Sally Morgenthaler's article over at Allelon. She sums up her experience with worship evangelism, which she can be rightly called the initiator or innovator of this movement. In grief, she admits the church has become narcissistic and misuses worship as the chief means of getting people inside the walls of the church building. As she described the perception of a nonbeliever experiencing this worship evangelism, I was struck by this quote,

No sad songs. No angry songs. Songs about desperation, but none about despair. Worship for the perfect. The already arrived. The good-looking, inoffensive, and nice. No wonder the unchurched aren't interested.

The church has become insulated from reality by its own worship. In Romans 12, Paul urges Christians to worship. He does not say that we should gather on one single day and allow nonbelievers to gather to us. He does not say that we should spend all our time, effort, and money on a single event for adore and praise God. He does not say that we should seek relevant songs or tunes. No, instead Paul says that worship by being transformed, living our lives as a sacrifice. A sacrifice! Now, if you allow me to pull this out of the "spiritual" talk of daily quiet times or prayer times into reality; I think Paul is saying that we must go into the world, into our communities, into our neighborhoods and seek solidarity. For most of us, that means opening ourselves to the grief and suffering of those who don't have their lives together. That means giving up our self-referential, self-sustaining, narcissistic, consumeristic lifestyles in order that others may be experience wholeness.

Most nonbelievers will find Sunday morning worship at most churches irrelevant and probably annoying. Who can fit into this picture of continual happiness and praise? Is there any room for the suffering? Is there any room for the pain of the world? Is there any room for the grief and tears shed over those who don't yet know God?

So, what do we do with Sunday morning worship? Do away with it altogether? No, connect it with reality. We realize that worship is a time for Christians to be transformed for God's mission, not a time for happiness or comfort. This should be a time of discomfort sometimes, lamenting the pain in the world as well as the weakness of the church to meet it. Then, and only then will true praise for God flow, since it is here that we meet God. In our weakness, seeking to find him in his strenght among our neighbors, communities, and nonchurched.