Happy New Year's Eve!

Since starting Experimental Theology in the middle of 2006, I've collected highlights from the blog at the end of the year. Tomorrow I'll be posting the 2012 Year in Review.

But if you are a new reader, or even a long time friend here, you might want to go back and survey all the things we've talked about over the last five or so years. And trust me, it's a lot of stuff. Have you seen the sidebar? Good Lord.

So, for your browsing pleasure if you are killing time over the holidays, links to the Years in Review from 2007-2011:

The 2007 Year in Review
The 2008 Year in Review
The 2009 Year in Review
The 2010 Year in Review
The 2011 Year in Review

Tomorrow on New Year's Day we'll take a look back at the year that was 2012.

I've been wanting to blog through the Rule of St. Benedict. But the vision of that seems too daunting to me. So a middle way: On Fridays I'll share a passage from the Rule, perhaps just a quote, perhaps with some commentary. Though I might skip chapters the plan is to go sequentially through the Rule, beginning to end.

Prologue
⁴⁵Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord's service. ⁴⁶In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. ⁴⁷The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love.

The description of a monastery as a "school for the Lord's service" is interesting. I wonder if churches see themselves the same way?

"Welcome to the Oak Trails Church! We are a school, a school for the Lord's service."

It's an interesting question because Benedict raises the prospect of "a little strictness," though "nothing harsh, nothing burdensome." Which makes sense if organization is a school, a place of training.

Incidentally, the phrase "nothing harsh, nothing burdensome" is historically and theologically significant in the history of monasticism. The Rule of Benedict became so influential because it introduced into the monastic movement a humanity that was largely absent in the harshly ascetical expressions of early Christian monasticism. There is a great concern in the Rule for failing or struggling monks and a recognition that basic things like decent food, rest, and clothing are not sinful indulgences of the flesh.

Let love
be without dissimulation.
Abhor
that which is evil;
cleave
to that which is good.
Be kindly affectioned
one to another
with brotherly love;
in honour preferring
one another;
Not slothful
in business;
fervent
in spirit;
serving the Lord;
Rejoicing
in hope;
patient
in tribulation;
continuing instant in prayer;
Distributing to
the necessity of saints;
given to hospitality.
Bless them
which persecute you:
bless,
and curse not.
Rejoice
with them that do rejoice,
and weep
with them that weep.
Be of the same mind
one toward another.
Mind not high things,
but condescend to men
of low estate.
Be not wise
in your own conceits.
Recompense
to no man
evil for evil.

Whoever cannot be alone should beware of community. Such people will only do harm to themselves and to the community. Alone you stood before God when God called you. Alone you had to obey God’s voice. Alone you had to take up your cross, struggle, and pray and alone you will die and give an account to God. You cannot avoid yourself, for it is precisely God who has singled you out. If you do not want to be alone, you are rejecting Christ’s call to you, and you can have no part in the community of those who are called…

But the reverse is also true. Whoever cannot stand being in community should beware of being alone. You are called into the community of faith; the call was not meant for you alone. You carry your cross, you struggle, and you pray in the community of faith, the community of those who are called. You are not alone even when you die, and on the day of judgment you will be only one member of the great community of faith of Jesus Christ. If you neglect the community of other Christians, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your being alone can only become harmful for you...

We recognize, then, that only as we stand within the community can we be alone, and only those who are alone can live in the community. Both belong together...

Whoever cannot be alone should beware of community. Whoever cannot stand being in community should beware of being alone.

--Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from Life Together (emphases are Bonhoeffer's)

Merry Christmas!

A poem of mine--"Incarnation"--from last year:

This is the emptying.
The release of heaven.
The descent
into the warmth
of a young girl's womb.
Vitally yoked
to her heartbeat and life.
Sharing the scandal
and embarrassment of flesh.
A covenant of love
sealed in ligament and bone.
Glory
to God in the Highest.
Glory
here in straw and blood.

For Christmas Eve a poem I wrote--"Luke 2.8-14"--two years ago.

they did not seem to notice,
grazing, oblivious
that the sky was burning,
that this world was ending.
above
each icy fleck
grew and warmed,
and exploded into this conflagration of heaven.
nor did they seem to hear,
grazing, deaf
to the melody cascading
over the grass and ceders.
a Song
that seemed so very old
and ancient,
but News to us.

Three years ago I wrote about one of my favorite Advent/Christmas paintings, Luc Olivier Merson's Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1879):

I love Rest on the Flight into Egypt for a couple of reasons. First, the scene is haunting and full of fatigue. Joseph is asleep on the desert floor. One imagines his mental and physical exhaustion fleeing danger and trying to take his wife and baby across deserts to a foreign land.

And what awaits them at journey's end? Will they find friends in Egypt? Work? And when will it be safe to go back home?

Sitting on the Sphinx, in a striking juxtaposition and lending an exotic touch to the scene, is Mary and the baby.

The baby. The only source of light in the painting.

What I like about Rest on the Flight into Egypt is how it depicts, from the very beginning of his life, the homelessness of the Messiah. God is a refugee, an immigrant, a stranger in a strange land, a person of exile.

Rest on the Flight into Egypt is a model for the life of the church. We are people of exile. Strangers among the nations. All we carry across the wastelands of this earth is the Christ Child. We have nothing else to offer.

This note is echoed in John Howard Yoder's book The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited where he suggests that the church should model its existence after the Jewish diaspora. The church is to embrace a "cosmopolitan homelessness" and accept "dispersion" among the nations as a part of its "mission." The church is to embrace "galut as calling." Galut is a Hebrew word for the situation of living in a state of exile or homelessness. I think Rest on the Flight into Egypt vividly captures the experience of galut.

Yoder uses the phrase "galut as calling" to describe the landless missionary existence of Christians. The biblical models for this existence in the Old Testament are Joseph, Daniel and Esther. Joseph, Daniel and Esther each lived as exiles, as resident aliens. Each labored alongside the people of a nation to which they did not belong, each working elbow to elbow "seeking the welfare of the city" (Jer. 29.7).

We can add Mary and Joseph to this list while they lived and worked in Egypt with the baby Jesus.


That is my wish for the church this Advent season, that "non-Christians" find us, in every place, working side-by-side with them, as partners, seeking the welfare of the city. The church isn't a fortress or a gated community or a community of snobbish like-mindedness and self-righteousness. The church is a mission as we live in exile among the nations. Purposely scattered, in jobs and neighborhoods across the world, to work alongside our neighbors to bring peace on earth and good will to all.

During the Christmas season in the Beck house we like to read Christmas books aloud before bedtime. Our favorite story to read is Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol.

And I must admit that my vocal characterizations of this story are simply remarkable.

A funny story about A Christmas Carol.

Aidan, our youngest, has always loved costumes. He's got all sorts of hats and capes and many year's worth of Halloween costumes that he uses to make various characters. He's always coming out of his room dressed as one thing or another.

(And Jana and I are very indulgent in this regard. Our boys have gone to church, from time to time when they were young, wearing capes. And we've shopped at Walmart with the boys in costume. Hey, if that's what they want to do we don't mind.)

When the boys were in elementary school Jana used to invite their two classroom teachers over to the house for a Christmas brunch. And during the brunch the boys would often play the piano for some entertainment.

Anyway, Miss Anne, their piano teacher, would also indulge Aidan's penchant for costume. Every piano recital Aidan has ever had he's done in a costume of his own design. One year as a solider turtle. Yes, you read that right, he did his piano recital dressed as a solider turtle. Let your imagination run wild.

And this, incidentally, is why Miss Anne is the best piano teacher ever.

But back to the Christmas brunch.

One year, when it came time during the brunch for Aidan to play his song for his teacher, he went to his room to get into costume. Which is what you do given how Miss Anne lets him dress for recitals. When he returns Aidan is dressed in his ghost costume from Halloween, which is basically a tattered white sheet with two holes for eyes. And he's got a Santa hat on his head.

Aidan sits at the piano and plays his song dressed as a ghost wearing a Santa hat. Jana and the teachers puzzle about what this costume is all about. After his song they ask, "Aidan, what are you dressed as?"

He answers, "I'm a Christmas Spirit!"

This is a continuation of my William Stringfellow Project where I read through all of William Stringfellow's books in chronological order in their first editions. This is the fifth installment of this series. We've already done the first four of Stringfellow's books: A Private and Public Faith (1962), Instead of Death (1962), My People is the Enemy (1964), and Free in Obedience (1964).

The fifth book published by Stringfellow, in 1966 by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, was Dissenter in a Great Society: A Christian View of American Crisis. The first edition dust jacket is pictured here.

In the Forward Stringfellow sets out the goal of the book:

This book has no other ambition than to be a chronicle of criticism, complaint, and dissent, informed, I trust, by the faith and ministry exemplified in Christ, in which all things whatsoever are brought into question in this life.

This "chronicle of criticism, complaint, and dissent" has four chapters. Chapter 1 deals with poverty. Chapter 2 deals with the American political crisis characterized by a "breakdown in rational public dialogue" between the political ideologies captured, as they are, by the Republican and Democratic parties. Chapter 3 deals with race relations. The final chapter is meant to articulate a vision of Christian political involvement, what Stringfellow calls "the orthodoxy of radical involvement."

Chapter 1--"Poverty, Property, and People"--starts off with a provocative question:

America has the technical capacity to abolish poverty; the question is: does it have the moral capability to do so?

Here in 2012 we are still asking that question. According to Stringfellow, much of our inertia on this question has to do with how we've moralized socioeconomic status, where the poor are considered to be immoral and lazy and the rich are considered to be hardworking and virtuous. Much of this stereotyping is due to the fact that both rich and poor have been ghettoized and, thus, rarely come into contact with each other.

The concealment of poverty by ghettoization of the poor means that both prosperous and poor live so separately and have so little human contact of any kind, are so accustomed to acting out a charade instead, that each regards the other in stereotypes which seldom contain much truth. The most popular stereotype of the poor is that in America a person is poor by choice and not because of circumstances beyond his or her own influence. Thus, if the poor were not so lazy, they would not be poor. If the poor were not so promiscuous, they would be able to support themselves. If the poor were not so profligate in drugs and drink and other dissipations, they would escape from their misery. These are common variations of the same theme that accounts for poverty as proof of moral decadence. Driven to its ultimate logic, to be poor is a grave sin. Such a stereotype of the poor is credible and popular among the prosperous because it implies that to be prosperous is a sign of moral superiority.

This, I would argue, is the great moral narrative of capitalism. And it continues to govern much of American political discourse. Stringfellow's take on that narrative:

Neither side of the stereotype is true, however, either empirically or theologically. Poverty, like wealth--in America as elsewhere--is more often a matter of inheritance and coincidence than of choice or initiative.

The other aspect here that Stringfellow is keen to stress is how there are structural associations between the rich and the poor. Conscience, for Stringfellow, is for the rich to recognize how their lot in life affects the lot of the poor.

Conscience, in other words, is knowing that men are related to, and responsible for, each other in all things. That is why poverty cannot be accounted for by blaming it on the poor, since the prosperous are proximately involved in the institutionalization of poverty in society.

The causal relation here is, of course, not direct. Our complicity is institutionally distributed and generationally inherited. This, for Stringfellow, is tantamount to the doctrine of the Fall and Original Sin.

To affirm that men live in this world at each other's expense is a confession of the truth of the Fall rather than an assertion of economic doctrine or a precise empirical statement. It is not that there is in every transaction a direct one-for-one cause and effect relationship, either individually or institutionally, between the lot of the poor and circumstances of those who are not poor. It is not that the wealthy are wicked or that the fact of malice is implicit in affluence. It is, rather, theologically speaking, that all human and institutional relationships are profoundly distorted and so entangled that no man or principality in this world is innocent of involvement in the existence of all people and all institutions.

I believe Stringfellow is simply saying that capitalism isn't the Messiah. Capitalism is contaminated by sin like all other human institutions. And, thus, Christians are passionate about addressing and redressing those sins.

Chapter 2 wades into the apocalyptic mess of politics in the 1960s. One part of Chapter 2 that caught my attention was Stringfellow's analysis regarding the thirst for theocracy among many Christians, the quest for a Christian and God-fearing nation. A lot has changed since the 1960s. But it also seems that not much at all has changed. The electoral map shows that we continue to live in Nixonland with the sequela of his Southern Strategy.

Chapter 3 turns to race relations. A lot of this material Stringfellow covered in his earlier My People is the Enemy. What I'd like to point out is the radical--and I do mean radical--ending of this chapter.

Again, the year was 1966. The historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 had recently been signed into law. And yet, race relations were deteriorating badly. The patient non-violence of Martin Luther King, Jr. was being increasingly criticized within the black community as Uncle Tom behavior. The more aggressive and militant Black Power movement was on the rise. Race riots were breaking out. The most significant of these was the Watts Riots in 1965.

So Stringfellow was writing at a time when black rage had reached a boiling point. A massive, violent black uprising appeared to be immanent. And in the face of that awful eventuality Stringfellow concludes his chapter on race with an appeal to white Christians:

The Cross means the invincible power of God's love for the world, even though all the world betrays, denies, abhors, fears, or opposes the gift of His love for the world. The Cross means voluntary love which is undaunted by any hostility or hatred or violence or assault. The Cross means voluntary love which is not threatened by death. The Cross means voluntary love which perseveres no matter what. The Cross means the gift of love even to one's own enemy--even to the one who would take one's life.

Whenever it comes to pass that white men who are Christians are attacked by Negros and endure ridicule or humiliation or interference or taunting torture; whenever it comes to pass that white Christians are exposed to the loss of their possessions, or status, or jobs, or property, or homes, or even families; if one's own life itself is at issue, let the witness of white Christians--for himself, for all men, and, in fact, for all people everywhere--be the witness of the Cross.

Even if the knife is at the belly, let the white Christian not protest. Let him receive the assault recklessly, without precaution, without resistance, without rationalization, without extenuation, without a murmur.

Is this asking for too much from white American Christians? Have they too long forgotten and forsaken the Cross?

God has neither forgotten nor forsaken the Cross.

This is why there is no other way that this enormous, desperate, growing accumulation of guilt, shame, estrangement, and terror can be absolved. There has never been--for anyone, anywhere, at any time--any other way. In the work of God in our midst, reconciling black men and white men, there is no escape from the Cross.

This is a crazy, breathtaking passage. This might be one of the most radical things written by a Christian in the midst of the 1960s American racial crisis. It is surely one of the most radical things I've ever read. In the face of rising black violence and rage, Stringfellow calls on white Christians to non-violently absorb the rage, to follow the way of the Cross without complaint, objection or protest. For Stringfellow, only the Cross is sufficient to overcome the evil legacy of chattel slavery in American history, the antidote to the generational poison that oozed through the veins American life.

The Cross. There is no other way.

Stringfellow ends Dissenter in a Great Society with a vision of Christian political engagement. For Stringfellow this means incarnating a life of radical reconciliation.

To be a Christian, to be already reconciled, means to love the world, all the world, just as it is--unconditionally.
...
[R]econciliation in Christ means loving the world absolutely. The time is immediate, not later on; the place is here, not any other or after place...It means, finally, loving your neighbor in the realization that each person's real neighbor is the one who is our enemy. The commandment to love one's neighbor, and the example, in Christ, of love for one's enemy are ultimately synonymous.

The idea here is that the primary conflict facing the Christian isn't the battle between good and evil. Humans don't have the moral or intellectual capacity to make that discernment, the ability to sort the world into The Good Guys and The Bad Guys.

The basic confession of the Gospel of Christ acknowledges that men and women do not possess, either personally or socially, the knowledge of good and evil, and that ultimate moral knowledge is the unique prerogative of God, who judges all men and all things as He pleases.

The battle, then, isn't between good and evil but between death and resurrection.

The drama of history, exposed in the insight of the Gospel, is not a conflict between evil and good, as secular ethics supposes, but concerns the power of death in this world and how death is overpowered in this life by the power of the Resurrection. 

Reconciliation, then, is overcoming the estrangements we experience--interpersonally, economically, politically, institutionally--because of the presence and power of death in the world. Reconciliation thus becomes a sacrament of life and a sign of the Resurrection in the midst of the Fall. For Stringfellow the church is to display and live out this reconciliation.

[T]he Church lives now as the new society in the midst of the old, as the reconciled community when all else is broken and distorted, as the new creation during the era of the Fall, as the example and vindication of life transcending the power of death.

In this, in being a "new society in the midst of the old," the church is a witness and foretaste:

Hence the vocation of the Church of Christ in the world, in political conflict and social strife, is inherently eschatological. The Church is the embassy of the eschaton in the world.

Last Advent I wrote about two different Christmas Carols--O Holy Night and It Came Upon a Midnight Clear--describing each as "resistance literature." Both songs are being sung a lot right now in churches and at Christmas concerts and they can become sentimentalized. So a reminder from last year about some of the justice and peace themes in these songs:

O Holy Night--Cantique de Noël in the original French--was composed in 1847 by Adolphe Adam. The text of the song came from a poem--Minuit, chrétiens--written by Placide Cappeau who had been asked by a parish priest to write a Christmas poem. Later, in 1855, Unitarian minister John Sullivan Dwight created a singing English edition based on Cappeau's French text.

As you sing O Holy Night you might notice the themes of emancipation from the third verse and chorus of the song:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.

Christ is the Lord! O praise His Name forever,
His power and glory evermore proclaim.
His power and glory evermore proclaim.

When you look the original French poem the themes of emancipation are even stronger. A more literal rendering of the third verse and chorus:

The Redeemer has overcome every obstacle:
The Earth is free, and Heaven is open.
He sees a brother where there was only a slave,
Love unites those that iron had chained.
Who will tell Him of our gratitude,
For all of us He is born, He suffers and dies.

People stand up! Sing of your deliverance,
Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer,
Christmas, Christmas, sing of the Redeemer!

Those are some pretty powerful lyrics. More, these were political and prophetic lyrics.

Recall that the song and the French poem were written in 1847. The English version was written in 1855, six years before the American Civil War and eight years before the Emancipation Proclamation. O Holy Night, it turns out, was a song of political resistance and protest. Imagine Americans singing in the years leading up to the Civil War the lyrics Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother; And in His name all oppression shall cease.

O Holy Night as political protest. A Christmas carol as resistance literature.

This is as it should be. Consider the words of Mary's Song, the Magnificat:

"My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior...

he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty."

If O Holy Night speaks of liberation and emancipation, consider also the powerful lyrics of It Came Upon the Midnight Clear on the themes of violence, war and peace:

Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.

This is a stunning image. The angels appear above the shepherds and declare the birth of the Christ child with this refrain of peace on earth:

Luke 2:13-14
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

Peace on earth.

And yet, as It Came Upon a Midnight Clear recounts, since that angelic declaration of peace there has been "two thousand years of wrong." Why? Because "man, at war with man, hears not the love-song which they bring."

There is no peace on earth because we don't hear the love song.

And so the call continues to go out:

"O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing."

I hope you are having a blessed Advent season.

Speaking of Advent, do you happen to know who made the first Nativity scene?

It was St. Francis of Assisi.

By my count there are five Nativity scenes on display right now at the Beck house. The big one in the living room. A wooden hand-painted one from South America that we keep out all year long. A little clay one in the kitchen over the sink. And the boys each have one in their bedrooms.

We also have three Christmas trees. One in the living room. One in the family room. And one in the boys' room.

We're a bit crazy.

We all know the Nativity scene. Mary, Joseph, and the baby in the manger. There are some farm animals, usually a cow and donkey. There may also be shepherds, angels, and wisemen.

Where did this scene come from?

Toward the end of his life in 1223 St. Francis went to the town of Greccio to celebrate Christmas. Once there Francis asked John of Greccio to erect a grotto model of Bethlehem. It was to have a straw filled manger with an image of the baby Jesus within it. It was also to have an ox and a donkey. And on Christmas evening the townspeople of Greccio gathered to view this scene by torchlight.

(My research into this has conflicting reports as to whether this first Nativity scene was images in a church or was a live nativity--real animals and people--in a cave.)

From that beginning in 1223 the tradition rapidly spread, with Nativity scenes--live or sculpted--coming to be an almost universal practice of Christian Advent and Christmas observance.

The Becks, obviously, are big fans.

All thanks to St. Francis.

I am mindful today that this is a part of the Advent story:

Matthew 2.16-18
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled:

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted,
because they are no more.”

A summary of the typical sermon that St. Francis would shout in towns to onlookers and passersby:

"Do penance--change your lives--by performing good works, since we will all soon die. Give to others, and it shall be given to you. Forgive and you shall be forgiven. And if you do not forgive others their sins, the Lord will not forgive you your sins."

Awhile back I wrote about my experiences worshiping with the poor. In that post I wrote the following:

Many of the people at Freedom are at the absolute bottom of society. And they know it. But in the midst of worship and during the proclamation of the gospel they are transformed. They become citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. They are infused with an incandescent dignity that they cannot find in the soul crushing meritocracy of American life. There is a reason they pull out the streamers and the tambourines. During worship at Freedom the Spirit of God moves and tells those in attendance--tells me--that we are precious, wanted and loved. That we are not waste, trash, or failures. That we are human beings.

I was reminded of this observation recently as I was reading again through Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited, a book that, it is said, Martin Luther King, Jr. took with him wherever he went.

In the book Thurman argues that the gospel of Jesus is intended for those "who stand, at a moment in human history, with their backs against the wall." For these, for those with their backs against the wall, the gospel provides "profound succor and strength to enable them to live in the present with dignity and creativity..."

How so? Thurman begins his analysis by noting that the gospel provides a grounding for self-identity and dignity. He writes:

The core of the analysis of Jesus is that man is a child of God...This idea--that God is mindful of the individual--is of tremendous import...In this world the socially disadvantaged man is constantly given a negative answer to the most important personal questions upon which mental health depends: "Who am I? What am I?"

The first question has to do with a basic self-estimate, a profound sense of belonging, of counting. If a man feels that he does not belong in a way in which it is perfectly normal for others to belong, then he develops a deep sense of insecurity. When this happens to a person, it provides the basic material for what the psychologist calls the inferiority complex. It is quite possible for a man to have no sense of personal inferiority as such, but at the same time to be dogged by a sense of social inferiority. The awareness of being a child of God tends to stabilize the ego and results in a new courage, fearlessness, and power. I have seen it happen again and again.

Knowing that the dispossessed and disinherited live with constant fear in the face of various forms of violence, Thurman goes on to note how an identity rooted in the gospel proclamation inoculates and protects the ego:

[Seeing oneself as a child God establishes] the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth can absorb the fear reaction. This alone is not enough, but without it, nothing else is of value. The first task is to get the self immunized against the most radical results of the threat of violence. When this is accomplished, relaxation takes the place of churning fear. The individual now feels that he counts, that he belongs.

More and more I'm convinced that this relaxation is the foundation of spiritual and psychological well-being.

And it's in the proclamation of the gospel where many of my poorer friends experience this relaxation--a feeling of belonging and counting that "stabilizes the ego and results in a new courage, fearlessness, and power."

I've read the story of the woman at Bethany many, many times. You're likely also familiar with the story. Jesus's anointing at Bethany:

Mark 14.1-9
Now the Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were scheming to arrest Jesus secretly and kill him. “But not during the festival,” they said, “or the people may riot.”

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Most of the attention in this text has swirled around Jesus's enigmatic phrase, "the poor you will always have with you." But that's not what grabbed me the other day. What grabbed me was this phrase:

"She has done a beautiful thing..."

As best I can tell, this is the only time in the NT where the word "beautiful" is used to describe an action or behavior. The doing of a beautiful thing.

More and more, I've come to describe my faith in similar terms, in aesthetic terms. Some things in the world--big global things and small things I notice during the day--I find beautiful. Other things I find ugly. And more, I try to live in a beautiful way. And in a way that has artistic integrity. And behind all these judgments is an aesthetic that is distinctively Christian.

What is faith? I'm often not sure. But I think a part of faith looks a lot like what the woman at Bethany does.

Faith is going places and doing beautiful things to anoint the Crucified One as Lord.

Conversion is, then, a response to God. Who invites us to a state of complete freedom, away from everything that is hostile to His goodness and mercy. The call one hears is not primarily or simply an encouragement to amend one's life or to follow a particular religious path. The call Jesus extended to his disciples, for example, was not religious--it was resoundingly secular. It was a summons to acknowledge God's unconditional love of us as individuals; and it was an invitation to proclaim that love to the world by acts of caring, forgiveness and compassion for others, by refusing to demand one's prerogatives at the expense of others and by refusing vengeance and reprisal. The New Testament summarizes the entire ministry and message of Jesus in one calm phrase that is deeply moving in its secular simplicity: "He went about doing good."

--Donald Spoto, from his biography Reluctant Saint: The Life of Francis of Assisi

Two years ago I wrote this Advent meditation about cultures of honor and violence, about why the shepherds were "watching their flocks at night" and about why it was such a scandal for shepherds to be the first to hear about the birth of Jesus.

I also explain why it's not a good idea to insult people south of the Mason-Dixon line...

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”

They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger.

One of my most favorite psychological studies was published in 1996 by Dov Cohen, Richard Nisbett, Brian Bowdle and Norbert Schwarz in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Titled Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor: An 'experimental ethnography' the study attempted to see how Southerners and Northerners in America responded to insult. The authors argued that a "culture of honor" had been, historically, more robust in the Southern United States (due to immigration patterns) making Southerners more sensitive to perceived affronts to their personal honor (e.g., being insulted or disrespected).

To test this theory the researchers asked Northern and Southern college students to come to a building where they were asked to fill out some surveys. After filling out the surveys the subjects were asked to drop them off at the end of a hallway and then return to the room. But the hall was blocked by a filing cabinet, open, and with a person looking through it. To get past this person the subject had to ask this person to close the drawer to make room to pass. The person at the filing cabinet was in on the study and he complies with the subject's request with some annoyance. The subject passes the filing cabinet, drops the surveys off, and then returns back toward the filing cabinet. The person at the filing cabinet has reopened the drawer and is again blocking the hallway. As the subject approaches for a second time this is what happens, quoting directly from the study:

As the participant returned seconds later and walked back down the hall toward the experimental room, the confederate (who had reopened the file drawer) slammed it shut on seeing the participant approach and bumped into the participant with his shoulder, calling the participant an “asshole.”

Sitting in the hallway nearby were raters who looked, ostensibly, like students reading or studying. But what the raters actually did was to look at the face of the subject at the moment the insult occured. They then rated how angry versus amused the subject looked. Because we can expect a wide variety of reactions to the insult. Some of us would smile or laugh it off. Some of us would get angry and seek to aggressively confront the person who just called us an asshole.

The research question was simple: How did the Southerners and Northerners compare when responding to the insult? Was one group more angered or amused?

The findings, consistent with the Southern culture of honor hypothesis, showed that Southerners were more likely to become angered by the insult while Northerners were more likely to become amused. This finding was reconfirmed in a variety of different follow up studies (for example, Southerners had significantly more stress hormones in their body relative to the Northerners after the insult).

All in all, then, it seemed that Southerners were working with, and defending, a more robust "honor code" than Northerners.

But where does a "culture of honor" come from?

One explanation that has gained a lot of attention is a theory posited by Richard Nisbett and Dov Cohen, two of the authors of the insult study, in their book Culture of honor: The psychology of violence in the South. Specifically, Nisbett and Cohen argue that different ethics of honor and retaliation have evolved in herding versus farming cultures.

The argument goes like this. It's hard to steal from farmers. If I have acres and acres of wheat or corn it's pretty hard for a couple of thieves to make off overnight with the fruits of my labor. More, for large parts of year there really is nothing to steal. There is no crop during the winter, spring and early summer. In short, for most of the year there is nothing the farmer has to guard or protect. And even when there is a crop to steal you can't make off with it overnight. Harvesting is time consuming and labor intensive.

All in all, then, farming cultures, it is argued, have evolved a fairly pacific and non-retaliatory social ethic.

Herding cultures face a very different problem. Imagine a cattle rancher. You can steal cattle much more quickly and efficiently relative to trying to steal a corn harvest. A handful of cattle rustlers can quickly make off with hundreds of cattle, with devastating economic impact upon the rancher. More, the cattle are always around. Unlike the farmer, the rancher's livelihood is exposed 24/7 for 365 days a year. While the farmer sleeps peacefully during the winter months there is no respite for the rancher.

Given these challenges, it is argued that herding cultures have developed a very strong ethic of retaliation. The only way to survive, economically, in a herding culture is to protect your livelihood and honor with lethal vigilance. Farmers, by contrast, are spared all this. And, given these contrasting demands, there has been a lot of data to suggest that herding cultures (or places settled by herding cultures like the American South) are, indeed, more violent than farming cultures.

(For full disclosure, this trend is disputed in the literature with data on both sides of the argument. Studies are still ongoing.)

Even if you don't find this argument compelling you likely recognize the stereotypes from American film. In Western films farmers are rarely violent. They tend to be peaceable. By contrast, ranchers and cowboys tend to be violent. And when someone in Western films has become respectable it's often associated with settling down and taking up the farming life. Conversely, leaving the farm is the resumption of violence. Think of William Munny in Unforgiven.

Why am I going into all this? Well, during this Advent season we are exposed to many portrayals of the shepherds in Luke 2 as they keep watch over their flocks at night. And these images often look like Hallmark cards. It's sweet and idyllic. Peaceable.

Well, there was a reason these guys were up at night watching their flocks. They are examples of a herding culture. The point being, these shepherds were pretty tough, even violent, men. They aren't into sheep because they are sweet looking props for our Nativity sets. When you see those sheep you should see dollar signs, stock portfolios, walking retirement plans. That's why the shepherds were up at night. If I put your paycheck, in 10 dollar bill increments, in a pile in your front yard I bet you'd be up a night keeping a watch on your flock. Gun in hand.

The point in all this is that these shepherds were likely rough and violent men. They had to be. So it's a bit shocking and strange to find the angels appearing to these men, of all people. Thugs might be standing around in our Nativity sets. That scene around the manger might be a bit more scandalous than we had ever imagined.

But here's the truly amazing part of the story. The angels proclaim to these violent men a message of "peace on earth." And, upon hearing this message, the shepherds leave their flocks and go searching for the baby! Can you now see how shocking that behavior is? This is something you don't do in a herding culture.

Now think about how all this might apply to us. For most of our lives we stand around protecting what is ours. Our neighborhoods, borders, homes, 401Ks, income, jobs, status, reputation. And on and on and on. We're like those shepherds, keeping watch over our flocks, even at night. We're tensed, suspicious, watchful, and ready to pounce. And all this makes us violent people, in small ways and large. That's the ethic of this world. It's a herding ethic. Protect what is yours because someone is coming to take it from you. It's a culture of honor. And violence.

And so the angels come to us and proclaim "peace on earth and good will to men." But how is that going to happen? Well, the story in Luke 2 shows us the way:

We follow the example of the shepherds. We leave our flocks and our lifestyles of violent vigilance...and go in search of the baby.

A lot of the blogs I've been reading the last few weeks have been talking about female participation in the disciplines (and the associated blogging) of theology, biblical studies, religious studies and philosophy. Searching around I found this graphic (H/T Crooked Timber) of % PhDs awarded to women by academic discipline (in 2009):

As you can see, philosophy and religious studies do rank near the bottom. Psychology, along with disciplines like literature, anthropology, and linguistics, is at the top.

That's interesting to me as I tend to think of philosophy and biblical/religious studies--content-wise--as akin to literature studies, the humanities or the social sciences. Again, content-wise.

So the gender divide would, I guess, seem to be cultural in nature. As to what those cultural issues might be I couldn't say.

Leviticus 13.45-46
Anyone with such a defiling disease must wear torn clothes, let their hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of their face and cry out, "Unclean! Unclean!" As long as they have the disease they remain unclean.

They must live alone; they must live outside the camp.

Matthew 8.2-3a
A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

And Jesus reached out his hand and touched him.

Because this is the sort of thing I do for fun I thought I'd share a bit of sleuthing regarding the Lord's Prayer.

Have you ever noticed when praying the Lord's Prayer aloud that everybody does good until you get to the line "forgive us our..."?

At that point in the prayer cacophony breaks out as some people say "debts" and others say "trespasses."

The other day I got curious about that and went in search of the translations that render this differently. I started with the NIV:

NIV:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors...

Okay, so the NIV has "debts." So I went on to look at other translations. And guess what? There is almost universal agreement among the major translations, all having "debts" like the NIV:

ESV, ASV, NASV, KJV, NRSV, NJ:
our debts...our debtors.

To be sure, some more modern, dynamic and contemporary translations have "sins" or "wrongs." But none of these, along with the more established translations, have "trespasses."

So that left me scratching my head. Where in the world did "trespasses" come from?

Given that I use the Book of Common Prayer I knew it had "trespasses." So my hunch was that "forgive us our trespasses" came from the BCP rather than from the bible translations. I'm using the 1979 BCP. But just to make sure I went back to the 1549 edition, the very first BCP. And sure enough, "forgive us our trespasses" is there:

Book of Common Prayer (1549):
OURE father, whiche arte in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kyngdom come. Thy wyll be done in earth as it is in heaven. Geve us this daye oure dayly bread. And forgeve us oure trespasses, as we forgeve them that trespasse agaynst us. And leade us not into temptacion. But deliver us from evell. Amen. 

But that raises another question. Where did the 1549 BCP come up with this translation? Recall, the Authorized (King James) Version didn't appear until 1611.

After some sleuthing I learned that the 1549 edition of the BCP used the Tyndale Bible (1526). And checking the Tyndale Bible I think we find the origin of "forgive us our trespasses":

Tyndale Bible (1526):
And forgeve vs oure treaspases eve as we forgeve oure trespacers.

In short, from the KJV onward the translation of Matthew 6.12 has gone with "debts." But the 1526 Tyndale Bible had it as "trespasses." This translation was used in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer and is preserved in the BCP to the present day.

It's a Tyndale vs. King James thing.

And thus the cacophony in our churches.

Jana and I were recently talking about work issues. Jana is a theater teacher and she was working on an upcoming play. Putting on a play is stressful, and one of the stresses is wanting it to be "good," good for the kids and good for those who come to see the play.

But sometimes "good" is hard to get to. We often don't have control over everything we need to control to get to "good." You don't have control over the acting talent and you don't have control over the athletic schedule that trumps the fine arts schedule. And you have your own, mainly physiological, limitations as to how much time and energy you can devote to the production. There are only so many hours in the day and you have to sleep, and eat, and go to work, and take care of family and friends.

I'm sure you can identify in you own life circumstances.

As Jana and I were talking about this, I observed that perhaps rather than focusing on the quality of the final product--Is it good or bad?--we should think about environments and ecosystems. The final product will be what it will be given a host of factors, many of which are out of your control. But what we can do is create an environment where, to use a Catholic Worker phrase, "it is easier to be good." An ecosystem that honors and cultivates goodness, kindness, generosity, forgiveness and compassion. We can be the sunshine and rain for these virtues.

So that's what I said to Jana. "Don't worry about the quality of the show. That'll take care of itself and will be what it will be. Just be sunshine and rain."

That advice is for me as well. Sunshine and rain. Nourish and cultivate the goodness around me. Create as far as my influence extends--and that might only be five feet from my body--an ecosystem where it is easier for people to be good.

As best I can tell, there is no scholarly consensus as to why the ancient Israelites selected the practice circumcision to be the sign of their covenant with YHWH. Regardless, they did. In the biblical narrative, the convent of circumcision is introduced in Genesis 17 with Abraham:

Genesis 17.1-2, 9-10
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”

Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised..."

Whatever circumcision symbolized at the start, at the very least it was a physically distinctive mark that set the tribes of Israel apart from the surrounding and neighboring tribes. Circumcision meant that these people were set apart for YHWH--distinctive, holy, consecrated.

But it wasn't too long before the notion of circumcision began to drift to another body part. In the giving of the Law to Israel after the Exodus we see circumcision shift from the genitalia to the heart. To be sure, genital circumcision was still practiced, but the idea of being "set apart" and "consecrated" began to shift from a physical mark to behavioral distinctiveness.

Deuteronomy 10.16; 30.6
Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.

The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live.

Circumcision becomes less about ethnic identification than an issue of obedience and love of YHWH.

In the NT, Paul echos this behavioral shift, arguing that "true circumcision" is a matter of obedience to the Law and not simply the physical mark. Circumcision is a matter of the heart.

Romans 2:25-29
Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised. So then, if those who are not circumcised keep the law’s requirements, will they not be regarded as though they were circumcised? The one who is not circumcised physically and yet obeys the law will condemn you who, even though you have the written code and circumcision, are a lawbreaker.

A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.

In this we see a spiritualizing of the concept of circumcision. Circumcision is less a matter of the flesh than it is obedience to God.

And beyond the genitalia and the heart we see circumcision also applied to a third body part.

The ears.

In the Old Testament prophets there is a growing concern with ears: the ability to hear the Word of God, the ability to be open and receptive to God. In the prophets there is a lot of discussion about ears that are "closed," "deaf," or "stopped up" to the Word of God.

Ezekiel 12.2
“Son of man, you are living among a rebellious people. They have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear, for they are a rebellious people."

Jeremiah 5.21
"Hear this, you foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear..."

This culminates in using uncirumcision to designate ears closed to the Word of God:

Jeremiah 6.10
To whom shall I speak and give warning,
that they may hear?
Behold, their ears are uncircumcised,
they cannot listen;
behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn;
they take no pleasure in it.

In the gospels, particularly in his parables, Jesus also draws attention to the ears: "He who has ears to hear let him hear."

In the NT it is Stephen, in his sermon before the Sanhedrin, who makes the explicit connection between spiritual deafness and uncircumcision:

Acts 7.51
“You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!"

What I find of interest here is how circumcision is a deliberate act of setting something apart, an act of consecration. Which is interesting given the anatomical relationship between ears and heart. A relationship that I think the prophets were getting at.

The ears function as gate-keepers. If the ears are "closed" then nothing gets to the heart. Thus the shift to the ears, as I see it, is a temporal shift of focus. That is, there is something in the immediate and initial reaction to the Word of God that is picked out by pointing to the ears. A reference to the ears is pointing out something about your reaction right here and right now. Like when you are talking to someone and you say, "You are not listening to me." To be sure, this refusal to listen is a matter of the heart, but the reference to the ears changes the emphasis. This is a a shift from "their hearts are far from me"--which points to a chronic condition of waning affections, a falling out of love--to the more acute and immediate assessment of "I'm talking to you but you're not listening to me." Resistance in the moment is being pointed out. Someone is talking and you're sticking your fingers in your ears. In fact, that very image is used by the prophets:

Zechariah 7:11
But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and covered their ears.

I find the connection between circumcision and ears interesting. Circumcision is a deliberate act of "setting apart." So what might it mean to "circumcise your ears"? To have holy, consecrated ears? Ears to cultivated to "hear" God in the babel of the world?

I had a wonderful time on Friday being on the campus of Eastern Mennonite University. I gave a lecture as a part of the Suter Science Seminar series, speaking about my book Unclean. Thanks so much to EMU and my kind host Tara Kishbaugh for the invitation and wonderful experience on campus.

Friday morning, before my afternoon lecture, I spoke in the EMU chapel. The podcast can be found here if you'd like to listen in.

A programming note: the first part of the talk is my reading a parable--"Hospitality for a Demon" (and doing the demon voice!)--from Peter Rollins's wonderful collection of provocative parables The Orthodox Heretic.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent.

Last year during Advent I noticed a lot of blog posts, Facebook updates and Twitter tweets lamenting people singing Christmas carols during Advent.

Yes, there are Advent snobs.

But the point is well taken, and one that I've only just recently come to appreciate. Because I didn't grow up in a liturgical tradition I never learned to note or appreciate the distinction between Advent and Christmas. It was all just Christmas to me.

But the distinction is this. Advent is a time of expectation, a season of waiting and anticipation. Christmas is a time of celebration and rejoicing for the gift that is given.

In liturgical time, during Advent Christ isn't yet born, we are looking forward, anticipating, longing for, and waiting for the birth of Immanuel. So an Advent song would be "O Come O Come Emmanuel."

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel

Advent is a groaning, the time of being in exile and longing for liberation.

The trouble is, there's not a ton of popular Advent songs. And Advent lasts for four weeks. So a lot of Christmas carol poaching occurs, pulling in songs celebrating Christ's birth into the Advent season. And if you care about such things, if you are an Advent purist, that's a no-no.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many Christians (and the world at large) think that Christmas is only a single day. But as I've written about before, Christmas is a season. There are, as we all know, twelve days of Christmas. Those twelve days--from the Feast of the Nativity (Christmas Day) to Epiphany--are the Christmas season.

But that's not what most people think. Most people think Advent is the Christmas season. But it's not. Advent is Advent and Christmas is Christmas. But in mistakenly thinking that Advent is "the Christmas season" many Christians go ahead and sing Christmas songs early. Because, if you think about it, if Christmas lasts only one day you'd only ever get to sing Christmas carols on one day a year, only on Christmas day. Basically, if you think Christmas is only one day you almost have to sing Christmas carols during Advent if you want to sing "O Holy Night" and "We Three Kings" and "The First Noel" at least a couple of times.

(Suggestion. Why don't we change all Christmas carols to the future tense to make them Advent songs?

"O holy night, the stars will be shining brightly..."

"Silent night, holy night, all will be calm, all will be bright..."

Terrible idea, I know. Just brainstorming here.)

Does any of this matter? Probably not. Few of us are Advent snobs. But all this does make you wonder about our inability to wait. About the Christian rush to a happy conclusion.

Advent is sort of like a lament. Advent is being the slave in Egypt, sitting with the experience of exile. Advent is about looking for God and hoping for God in a situation where God's promises are outstanding and yet to be fulfilled.

So I wonder if our rushing through Advent to the celebration of Christmas might have some spiritual consequences, akin to skipping Lent so we can get to Easter. Might Christmas be too triumphalistic without Advent? Much like Easter Sunday without Good Friday?

Waiting for God and enduring the pain of that waiting is a spiritual discipline. Advent is a time to cultivate that discipline. A time to chasten the rush to happy endings in our spiritual lives.

We must learn to wait on God.

We must learn to celebrate Advent.