...trudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus...the Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire... --Flannery O'Connor
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 2015 Year in Review.
If you're new the blog and want to trace it's evolution, and my faith journey, over the years, you can dip into the Years in Review from 2007-2014:
I had a conversation recently on the subject of suffering where I shared some of the observations of Gustavo Gutiérrez, one of the founders of liberation theology, from his book On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent. I wrote about this in 2013.
A key puzzle about the book of Job is the nature of the wager between the satan and God. According to Gutiérrez the wager sets up the basic question behind the Book of Job, what the book is all about.
According to Gutiérrez the Book of Job and the issue behind the wager is about the possibility of disinterested religion. Gutiérrez writes:
Can human beings have a disinterested faith in God--that is, can they believe in God without looking for rewards and fearing punishments? Even more specifically: Are human beings capable, in the midst of unjust suffering, of continuing to assert their faith in God and speak of God without expecting a return? Satan, and with him all those who have a barter conception of religion, deny the possibility. The author [of Job], on the contrary, believes it to be possible, although he undoubtedly knew the difficulty that human suffering, one's own and that of others, raises against authentic faith in God. Job, whom he makes the vehicle of his own experiences, will be his spokesman.
In the end, God wins the wager. The rebellious but upright Job, in all his suffering and complaints, in his dogged commitment to the poor and his acknowledgement of the Lord's love, shows that his religion is indeed disinterested.
As I've shared before, I'm struck here by Gutiérrez's description of an "authentic faith" as I wrote a whole book--The Authenticity of Faith--about that same possibility. And there's a convergence between what Gutiérrez is saying and what I argue. Specifically, according to Gutiérrez if faith is disinterested it is a faith that isn't driven and sustained by rewards and punishments, by whips and carrots. But that produces the experience of Job, the Winter Christian and sick soul I describe in The Authenticity of Faith.
In short, the heart of the satan's accusations about Job is that Job's faith is not "for nothing." Job, the satan points out, has been richly rewarded by God. Of course Job believes in the face of that blessing. But take that blessing away and Job, the satan argues, will turn and curse God. That's the point of the wager, the root question behind the book of Job. Can faith be disinterested? Gutiérrez writes:
It is impossible for the satan to deny that Job is a good and devout man. What he questions is rather the disinterestedness of Job's service of God, his lack of concern for a reward. The satan objects not to Job's works but to their motivation: Job's behavior, he says, is not "for nothing"...In the satan's view, a religious attitude can be explained only by expectation of a reward...
[And so] the satan proposes his wager: "Lay a finger on his possessions: then, I warrant you, he will curse you to your face." Thus the central question of the Book of Job is raised at the outset: the role that reward or disinterestedness plays in faith in God and in its consistent implementation. God believes that Job's uprightness is disinterested, and he therefore accepts the challenge. The author is telling us in this way that utilitarian religion lacks depth and authenticity; in addition, it has something satanic about it...The expectation of rewards that is at the heart of the doctrine of retribution vitiates the entire relationship and plays the demonic role of obstacle on the way to God. In self-seeking religion there is no true encounter with God but rather the construction of an idol...To believe "for nothing," "without payment," is the contrary of a faith based on the doctrine of retribution. This point will be bitterly debated in the subsequent dialogues.
It's bitterly debated because the doctrine of retribution--that our relationship with God is governed by rewards and punishments--is the theological system that Job's friends will try to defend. God punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous. That is how it works with God, according to Job's friends. Thus, in the face of Job's suffering the law of retribution says that Job has to be guilty of some sin.
But Job refuses to admit any guilt. And yet, maintains his faith in God. In doing so Job shows his faith to be costly but disinterested.
Job's faith in God is revealed to be authentic--it is not motivated by reward--and thus the argument of the book of Job made: Disinterested faith is possible.
More, and making the point I make in The Authenticity of Faith, in its eschewing a utilitarian, bartering approach to God Gutiérrez concludes: "disinterested religion alone is true religion."
"Stop wasting time running after the perfect community; Live your life fully in your community today."
--Jean Vanier
At the end of the day, I think that's the secret of being the church.
But I think a lot of people never commit to living fully where they are because they are always fantasizing about a perfect community that doesn't exist.
A few months ago I was giving a chapel talk to ACU Honors students about what I called "the poetry of the Christian life." The ideas were taken from Walter Brueggemann's book Reality, Grief and Hope.
I shared three things with the students.
First, I said, when you look at the poetry of the prophets you see three different sorts of poetry, each with a different emotional tone. The prophets sing three different songs.
The first song is prophetic rage and indignation. This is the cry, "Let justice roll down like a river!"
The second song is grief and lamentation, an expression of sorrow in the face of suffering and loss. Sackcloth and ashes.
The third song is a song of hope. This is the prophetic turn we see in Isaiah 40.1, where after all the anger and sorrow a song of hope breaks out, "Comfort, comfort my people." This is the poetry of Ezekiel's vision of the Valley of Dry Bones. Can these dead things live again? Yes they can.
The second point I made to the students is that we all have a natural poetry. Some of these songs we find easier to sing than others. The prophets among us are wonderful at the poetry of rage and rebuke. Winter Christians like myself are good at grief, we're more sad than angry. And finally, there are the Summer Christians who are good at seeing hope where others do not.
And what I emphasized here is that you need to embrace your natural poetry. Sing the song you were born to sing.
But the final point I made was that, while you should embrace your natural song, you need to become skilled at singing all the songs. If you only sings songs of hope your faith will become trivial and superficial, disconnected from the injustice and suffering in the world. And if you only sing songs of anger or sorrow you'll burn yourself out or fail to offer encouragement to those who most need to hear it. I learned that out at the prison. I came into the prison singing my natural song--sorrow--but the men in the study wanted to hear some hopeful tunes. So I've learned to sing hopeful songs. It's not natural for me, but I'm getting better at it.
So that was my message to the students. We all have a natural song. Embrace it and sing it out loud.
But we also need to learn to sing all of the songs if our faith is to be vibrant and a blessing to others.
Immature Christians tend to sing only one song, ever. Anger over and over. Or lament over and over. Or praise over and over.
Mature Christians, by contrast, are always the best poets, skilled at singing all the songs and adapting the rhyme and meter of faith to the season and situation.
So if you want to be a better Christian, I told the students, work to become a better poet.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
upon them the light has dawned.
You have increased their joy and given them great gladness;
they rejoiced before you as with joy at the harvest.
For you have shattered the yoke that burdened them;
the collar that lay heavy on their shoulders.
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given,
and the government will be upon his shoulders.
And his name will be called:
Wonderful Counselor;
the Mighty God;
the Everlasting Father;
the Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end,
Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish and uphold it with justice and righteousness.
From this time forth and for evermore;
the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
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."
If your desire lies open to him who is your Father and who sees in secret, he will answer you.
For the desire of your heart is itself your prayer. And if the desire is constant, so is your prayer. The Apostle Paul had a purpose in saying: Pray without ceasing. Are we then ceaselessly to bend our knees, to lie prostrate, or to lift up our hands? Is this what is meant in saying: Pray without ceasing? Even if we admit that we pray in this fashion, I do not believe that we can do so all the time.
Yet there is another, interior kind of prayer without ceasing, namely, the desire of the heart. Whatever else you may be doing, if you but fix your desire on God's Sabbath rest, your prayer will be ceaseless. Therefore, if you wish to pray without ceasing, do not cease to desire.
The constancy of your desire will itself be the ceaseless voice of your prayer. And that voice of your prayer will be silent only when your love ceases...
The chilling of love means that the heart is silent; while burning love is the outcry of the heart. If your love is without ceasing, you are crying out always; if you always cry out, you are always desiring; and if you desire, you are calling to mind your eternal rest in the Lord.
My son Aidan has a taste for the quirky and expressed an interest in seeing the movie Krampus, the Christmas fantasy, horror, comedy mash-up.
I was intrigued to go because of the Christmas mythology the movie was tapping into.
Rooted in European folklore, Krampus is one of the Companions of Saint Nicholas. The Companions go by different names in different cultures, and their role is to provide a dark counterpart to St. Nicholas. Here's the Wikipedia description (slightly edited) of the Companions:
The companions of Saint Nicholas are a group of closely related figures who accompany St. Nicholas in German-speaking Europe and more widely throughout the territories formerly in the Holy Roman Empire. These characters act as a foil to the benevolent Christmas gift-bringer, threatening to thrash or abduct disobedient children. Jacob Grimm associated this character with the pre-Christian house spirit (kobold, elf) which could be benevolent or malicious, but whose mischievous side was emphasized after Christianization. The association of the Christmas gift-bringer with elves has parallels in English and Scandinavian folklore, and is ultimately and remotely connected to the modern Christmas elf in American folklore.
Names for the "dark" or threatening companion figure include: Knecht Ruprecht in Germany, Krampus in Austria, Bavaria, Croatia, Slovenia, Friuli, Hungary; Klaubauf in Bavaria, Austria...Schmutzli in Switzerland...The corresponding figure in the Netherlands and Flanders is called Zwarte Piet or "Black Pete," and in Swiss folklore Schmutzli, (schmutz meaning dirt). In the Czech Republic, St. Nicholas is accompanied by the čert (Devil) and anděl (Angel).
Santa mythology has always had a moral aspect, rewards for the good children and punishments for the bad children. The visitation of Santa has always been a bit ominous. Consequently, children are taught to "watch out" for Santa:
You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is comin' to town
He's making a list
He's checking it twice
He's gonna find out
Who's naughty or nice
Santa Claus is comin' to town
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake
In our modern, kinder Santa mythology the punishment you get is being ignored by Santa, or getting a lump of coal in your stocking. This reflects our progressive, liberal sensibilities when it comes to disciplining children, the use of what psychologists call "negative punishment," the withdrawal or withholding of something positive. Time outs, grounding or taking away something cherished by the child (e.g., iPhone, car keys, video games, etc.) are all forms of negative punishment--punishment by subtraction/removal. Getting ignored by Santa for being naughty is a form of negative punishment.
Generations past, however, were less squeamish about positive punishment, bringing/adding something negative (like pain) into the life of the child. Spanking is the quintessential example of positive punishment when it comes to child discipline. And that's where Krampus and the Companions of St. Nicholas come in. Be good, children, or you'll get either St. Nicholas or Krampus. Presents or a beating.
The movie Krampus, then, is set up as a Christmas morality tale. The movie opens with the darkest of Christmas images--the frenzied mobs of Black Friday. We see shoppers knocking over the employees and people fighting over presents. It's basically Christmas retail hell. The nadir of the scene happens when a fight breaks out between the children participating in a Nativity play.
Which is potent imagery for Christians, violence around the manger of the Prince of Peace.
In the opening scenes, then, we get a vision of a completely decadent town, a town that, because it has lost touch with Christmas, has lost its soul, community and moral compass.
From these scenes we then switch to the home of Tom and Beth and their two children, Sarah and Max. Also living in the home is Tom's Austrian mother, the German-speaking grandmother who is affectionately referred to as "Omi" by Max and Sarah. Omi is the one who, later in the movie, tells the story of the Krampus to explain what is happening to the family and town.
Irritating family members soon show up to spend the holiday. And paralleling the retail hell scene, we are entertained with vignettes of holiday family hell as this dysfunctional family interacts. It's a Christmas hell all the way around--from the aggressive shopping to the horrors of family dysfunction.
All of this eventually summons Krampus who, along with some evil assistants, punishes the town. What follows is comedy/horror scenes reminiscent of the Gremlins (1984) movie.
And yet, from a theological perspective, the movie is more than a simple morality tale, a story of bad people getting Krampus rather than St. Nick. The real story isn't about moral just deserts, the real story is about enchantment.
What ultimately summons Krampus isn't wickedness but the loss of enchantment. Though he's getting a bit old for it, Max still believes in Santa. This is symbolized by the note he has once again written to Santa. But when his horrible cousins come they tease Max unmercifully for still believing. They find his note to Santa and humiliate Max by reading and mocking it aloud at the family dinner table.
Devastated and shamed, Max's belief in Santa snaps. Through tears he rips up the note to Santa, opens a window, and throws the pieces into the winter wind. And that--the loss of belief--is what summons Krampus.
We are led to believe in the movie that Max is that last one in his family and his town who, in words of the movie, still believes in miracles--still believes in Santa, still believes in enchantment. And this belief acts as a shield and buffer for the town. The town is wicked, but with one believer still left in the town the town has been spared a visit from Krampus. But as soon as Max rips up his letter to Santa, the moment the town is given wholly over to disenchantment, Krampus comes. When faith evaporates hell comes to earth.
Don't believe in Santa? Fine. You'll get Krampus instead.
This story is told again by Omi later in the movie. Omi has seen Krampus before. Like Max, as a child Omi lived in a town that became filled with coldness, hostility and inhumanity. And like Max this had seeped into Omi's home, a home that became filled with conflict. And like Max, Omi was the last person in her town who believed in Christmas. And when Omi gave up belief, despairing as Max despaired, she unwittingly summoned Krampus who came and took her family and the entire town away.
There's a lot of powerful theology here. Belief in miracles--faith, belief, enchantment--acts as a buffer, protection that keeps us from sliding into conflict, violence, and inhumanity. Once enchantment is lost Krampus comes. The Devil arrives and we descend into the hell we've be asking for.
More than a simple morality tale, where the bad people get what's coming to them, Krampus is ultimately about the moral consequences attendant to the loss of enchantment--the hell and inhumanity created upon earth when we stop believing in miracles.
Phrased differently, Krampus is a movie about enchantment as grace.
The last settlement scraggled out with a barbed wire fence
And fell from sight. They crossed coyote country:
Mesquite, sage, the bunchgrass knotted in patches;
And there the prairie dog yapped in the valley;
And on the high plateau the short-armed badger
Delved his clay. But beyond that the desert,
Raw, unslakable, its perjured dominion wholly contained
In the sun's remorseless mandate, where the dim trail
Died ahead in the watery horizon: God knows where.
And there the failures: skull of the ox,
Where the animal terror trembled on in the hollowed eyes;
The catastrophic wheel, split, sandbedded;
And the sad jawbone of a horse. These the denials
Of the retributive tribes, fiercer than pestilence,
Whose scrupulous realm this was.
Only the burro took no notice: the forefoot
Placed with the nice particularity of one
To who the evil of the day is wholly sufficient.
Even the jocular ears marked time,
But they, the man and the anxious woman,
Who stared pinch-eyed into the settling sun,
They went forward into its denseness
All apprehensive, and would many a time have turned
But for what they carried. That brought them on,
In the gritty blanket they bore the world's great risk,
And knew it; and kept it covered, near to the blind heart,
That hugs in a bad hour its sweetest need,
Possessed against the drawn night
That comes now, over the dead arroyos,
Cold and acrid and black.
This was the first of his goings forth into the wilderness of the world.
There was much to follow: much of portent, much of dread.
But what was so meek then and so mere, so slight and strengthless,
(Too tender, almost, to be touched)--what they nervously guarded
Guarded them. As we, each day, from the lifted chalice,
That strengthless Bread the mildest tongue subsumes,
To be taken out in the blatant kingdom,
Where Herod sweats, and his deft henchmen
Riffle the tabloids--that keeps us.
Over the campfire the desert moon
Slivers the west, too chaste and cleanly
To mean hard luck. The man rattles the skillet
To take the raw edge off the silence;
The woman lifts up her heart; the Infant
Knuckles the generous breast, and feeds.
The bible study at the prison this last Monday night was sober and sad. Billy was an inmate and popular. An excellent guitar player, Billy would often play for the prison worship services.
On Saturday Bill started having trouble in his cell. A female guard called for help. When the gurney came they placed Billy on it. The guard stayed with Billy as they raced him to the medical unit. Billy was transported to the local hospital.
But his heart stopped and he died.
The next day some of the men in the study, dear friends of Billy, thanked that female guard for what she did. She began to cry and said, "I wish I could have done more." And the prisoners offered her comfort. She did all she could. More than they had expected.
All this was shared at the start of the study. The mood was heavy. And then it was my time to get up and share my lesson. We were starting on the book of Job.
But I began by talking about Advent.
I started by contrasting Advent with Christmas. Advent, I explained, is sitting in the experience of exile. Waiting, hoping God will act in the future. We are slaves in Egypt. We are exiles in Babylon. We are sad friends mourning the death of Billy. Where is God? We are waiting. That, I said, is Advent. Learning to be patient, learning to wait on God.
We sang O Come, O Come Emanuel and Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus.
And then we opened our bibles to the book of Job.
Up until this point in the bible, I explained, the story has been governed by a theology of retribution, the "blessings and curses" of Moses (Deut. 11). Do good and stay faithful to God and you will be blessed. Turn to wickedness and idolatry and you will get punishment and exile.
The entry into the Promised Land. Judges followed by kings. Warnings upon warnings about the blessings and curses. Stay faithful. Do not bow to the false gods.
Deaf ears. Hard hearts. The Kingdom divides.
Israel descends into idolatry. Exile.
Judah follows. Exile.
The logic of retribution holds. The righteous are blessed. Sinners are punished. That's how God has set up the world. Bad things happen to bad people.
And then we get to the book of Job.
And an entire theological trajectory--starting in Deuteronomy and traced through 2 Kings--gets knocked off course. Good people are always blessed? Not so fast, says the book of Job.
Job is a man of integrity. And yet he suffers. Chapter after chapter Job's friends argue for the theology of retribution. Job is suffering, so he must have sinned. That's the way the world works. Moses said so.
Job disagrees. He's done nothing wrong. And yet God has cursed him. There is no lawful relationship here between virtue and suffering. Bad things happen to good people. Billy died on Saturday.
So Job waits on God. Waiting for vindication. Waiting for a chance to plead his case. Job wants answers. Waiting.
Like us in the wake of Billy's death.
You know what, I said to the men, as I reflect on it Job is a pretty good book for Advent. We talk about "the patience of Job."
Patience. Waiting on God. That's Job. That's Advent.
That's us.
But in the waiting is also expectation, longing, and hope.
The men share more from their conversation with the female guard who stayed with Billy until they took him away in the ambulance. Billy blessed her, she says through tears.
She shares Billy's last words, shared as they rushed toward the waiting ambulance.
A few months ago I gave a chapel talk for the students in our Honors College. They are a wickedly smart group of students. And they are beginning that journey where they are asking hard questions of the Christian faith. As they should.
By my message was this. You can't think your way into the Kingdom of Heaven. You can only love your way into the Kingdom.
And love, to borrow a point from James Smith, is always aimed at a vision of the good, a vision of human flourishing. Love is always desiring a Kingdom.
So what sort of Kingdom are you desiring, loving and craving? That's the question I posed.
For me, I said, the Kingdom of God looks like how Jesus moved through the world. That's the vision of the Kingdom I'm loving my way toward. In that sense, Jesus is my aesthetic, how I judge was is beautiful and ugly in my life and in the world.
Christianity, I told the students, is the practice of an incarnational aesthetics.
Loving your way toward something beautiful, loving your way into the Kingdom of God.
Last summer when we were traveling in the UK the question I was asked over and over again about the US was this:
What's up with all the guns?
The people in the UK are genuinely baffled by the gun culture of America. And it's really hard to both explain and defend the insanity of the US when it comes to guns.
For example, did you know that in the UK the police officers are unarmed? They do have an armed unit, like a SWAT team, that responds to incidents of gun violence, but the cops that you run into in the UK don't carry guns.
That's unimaginable in the US.
And that's what struck me as I contrasted the UK and the US. Imagination.
In the UK they have an image of good, experienced policing.
It's an image of an unarmed, seasoned police officer talking the gun out of the hands of young criminal. By contrast, the image of hot-headed and inexperienced policing is a young cop getting antsy and trigger happy, tragically shooting an armed criminal.
In the imagery of UK law enforcement when you lack policing skill you dumbly resort to a gun.
To be sure, as many lamented in these conversations, the UK police are becoming increasingly reliant upon guns. Much of this due to a rise in the use of guns among the criminal class.
Still, I'd like to bring us back to the observation about imagination.
Specifically, the UK imagination has been shaped by a potent image, an unarmed police officer talking the gun out of the hands of a criminal. Americans, by contrast, can't even imagine this.
That's what strikes me, how stunted is the American imagination when it comes to peace. Peaceable options that are easily imagined by others are unimaginable to Americans.
And that's why I think we are so violent and addicted to guns in the US.
In light of yesterday's post I wanted to share again another favorite Advent painting: Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Annunciation (oil on canvas, 1898).
As I mentioned last year when sharing this, this is my favorite depiction of Mary's visitation by the angel Gabriel. Mary is a youthful teenager, looking scared and vulnerable.
This vulnerability--and even ignominy--is the scandalous and incongruous power of God. On the outskirts of Empire, through this poor, young, frighted peasant girl God saved the world.
Our bible classes at church are going through a study of the Elijah and Elisha narratives in 1 and 2 Kings.
For our bible class this week I taught the stories from 1 Kings 17, and during class I made a connection with Advent.
Elijah is introduced to us in the opening verses of 1 Kings 17. After the previous chapters chronicling the kings the prophet rudely enters and interrupts the story.
King Ahab and Queen Jezebel have turned away from YHWH to worship Baal, the Canaanite rain god.
In a direct assault upon the rain god Elijah pronounces a drought to the king. At the start of the drought Elijah is fed by ravens by a brook in the Kerith Ravine. As the drought worsens and the brook dries up Elijah is sent into enemy territory, to Zarephath in Sidon, the providence at the heart of Baal worship.
In Zarephath Elijah encounters a poor widow who, along with her son, is on the brink of death. The widow, in a display of faith, gives the last of her food to the prophet. In reward for her trust and hospitality YHWH provides for them all. And later, after Elijah raises her son from the dead, the woman comes to confess that Elijah is the true prophet of God.
It's a humble and intimate story. God working through small things--birds and the small gifts of a poor widow. The characters are mundane and the location is marginal. Small people doing small things in unlikely places. And through them God invades enemy-occupied territory to bring dead things back to life.
God and his agents enter into enemy territory and begin to conquer the powers of death from within. No military, political, or ecclesiastical powers are active here. Indeed, the sources of life in this chapter are not normally associated with power. Here we have no imposition of strength from without, no exercise of power as it is normally conceived. Rather, effective power is exercised through the birds of the air, small gestures, meager resources, feeble words, human obedience, and the witness of a poor woman. Through such lowly means, God's work gets done, even in the most hostile of places.
And isn't that, I said to the class, exactly what we see with Christmas?
On the edges of geopolitical power, in the most hostile of places, a poor, young peasant girl says "Yes" to God. And a baby is born.
God and his agents enter into enemy territory and begin to conquer the powers of death from within.
Once again the Fire has penetrated the earth.
Not with sudden crash of thunderbolt,
riving the mountain-tops:
does the Master break down doors to enter his own home?
Without earthquake, or thunderclap:
the flame has lit up the whole world from within.
All things individually and collectively
are penetrated and flooded by it,
from the inmost core of the tiniest atom
to the mighty sweep of the most universal laws of being:
so naturally has it flooded every element, every energy,
every connecting link in the unity of our cosmos;
that one might suppose the cosmos to have burst spontaneously into flame.
As a child I loved all the children's Christmas shows. Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Merry Christmas Charlie Brown, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, to name a few.
With no videos, cable, NetFlix or DVR these shows were once a year opportunities. If you missed a show, you wouldn't see it again for an entire year.
So, these were BIG events in my childhood.
I was so addicted to these shows that, looking back, I can now discern that everything I know about Christmas I learned from TV.
Specifically, I learned from TV three big lessons about Christmas.
Lesson #1: There is Something Special About Christmas
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
The first lesson I learned was from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The lesson was this: There is something special about Christmas. Something that transcended the presents, Christmas trees, meals, or decorations. Christmas, to quote from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, was "a little bit more" than all these things.
If you don't recall the show, here's the basic plot. The Grinch, who lives in the mountains high above Whoville, hates the noise associated with Christmas. So, he dresses up like Santa Claus and ties a horn on the head of his dog Max to make him look like a reindeer. In these disguises they set off for Whoville.
Once in Whoville the Grinch proceeds to steal all the Christmas presents, trees, decorations, and food. He packs all this up and heads back up the mountain just as Christmas day is dawning.
The Grinch's plan is simple. He figures that if he takes away all the Christmas "stuff" the Whos won't be able to celebrate Christmas.
But the Grinch is wrong. In the climactic scene the Whos come out of their homes and, without a single piece of Christmas paraphernalia or presents, begin to sing their Christmas song Welcome Christmas:
Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,
Come this way!
Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome Christmas,
Christmas Day.
Welcome, Welcome
Fah who rah-moose
Welcome, Welcome
Dah who dah-moose
Christmas day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp
Fah who for-aze!
Dah who dor-aze!
Welcome, welcome Christmas
Welcome, welcome Christmas Day
Upon hearing the song the Grinch has this realization, and I quote:
So he paused. And the Grinch put a hand to his ear.
And he did hear a sound rising over the snow.
It started in low. Then it started to grow...
But the sound wasn't sad!
Why, this sound sounded merry!
It couldn't be so!
But it WAS merry! VERY!
He stared down at Who-ville!
The Grinch popped his eyes!
Then he shook!
What he saw was a shocking surprise!
Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing! Without any presents at all!
He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming!
IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
It came without ribbons! It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, `till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!"
And this realization has such a profound effect upon the Grinch that his heart, previously two sizes too small, grew three sizes that day.
So, I learned from How the Grinch Stole Christmas that Christmas was more than ribbons or tags. More than packages, boxes, or bags. Christmas was MORE.
But here was the deeply puzzling thing about How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Watch it as many times as you want and it will never be revealed just what Christmas was truly about. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a negative tale. It tells you what Christmas isn't. But it fails, in a quite puzzling way, to tell you what Christmas is.
So as child I was left in quite a quandary. Christmas was clearly very special, but it was still a mystery. Luckily, there was more TV to watch! And a part of the mystery of Christmas would be revealed to me in that quirky tale of a mutant reindeer and his friend, the elf, who wanted to be a dentist...
Lesson #2: Christmas Means Misfits Have a Place
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
After watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas l knew there was something special about Christmas. But How the Grinch Stole Christmas never says exactly why Christmas is special. I got a clue to answering this question by watching that classic Christmas program Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
The entire plot of Rudolph centers around misfits. The central misfits are Rudolph and the elf Hermey.
Rudolph, obviously, has some kind of genetic mutation. He's got a red nose and that, well, just isn't natural. So he is shunned, mocked, and excluded from the reindeer games.
Hermey has a different problem. He's terrible at making toys. And he also doesn't enjoy singing in Santa's elf choir. What Hermey really wants to be is a dentist. But for this curious interest Hermey is, like Rudolph, ostracized and made fun of. They are both, clearly, misfits. This is captured in the mournful little song they sing We're a couple of misfits:
We're a couple of misfits
We're a couple of misfits
What's the matter with misfits
That's where we fit in!
We're not daffy and dilly
Don't go 'round willy nilly
Seems to us kinda silly
That we don't fit in.
We may be different from the rest Who decides the test Of what is really best?
So Hermey and Rudolph leave Christmas Town and set out on their own.
The misfit theme is continued when Hermey, Rudolph, and Yukon Cornelius, after being chased by The Abominable Snowman, find the Island of Misfit Toys. This is an island where rejected, unwanted, and unloved toys find sanctuary. Rudolph, sympathetic to the plight of the Misfit Toys, because Rudolph knows what it's like to be a misfit, promises to take their plight to Santa. This is the lament of the misfit toys:
We're on the Island of Misfit Toys
Here we don't want to stay
We want to travel with Santa Claus
In his magic sleigh!
A pack full of toys
Means a sack full of joys
For millions of girls
And for millions of boys
When Christmas Day is here
The most wonderful day of the year.
A jack-in-the-box waits for children to shout
"Wake up! Don't you know that it's time to come out!"
When Christmas Day is here
The most wonderful day of the year.
Toys galore, scattered on the floor
There's no room for more
And it's all because of Santa Claus.
A skooter for Jimmy
A dolly for Sue
The kind that will even say, "How do you do?"
When Christmas Day is here
The most wonderful day of the year.
How would you like to be a Spotted Elephant? Or a Choo-Choo with square wheels on your caboose? Or a water pistol that shoots -- jelly? We're all misfits! How would you like to be a bird that doesn't fly? I swim! Or a cowboy who rides an ostrich? Or a boat that can't stay afloat? We're all misfits.
If we're on the Island of Unwanted Toys We'll miss all the fun with the girls and the boys When Christmas Day is here The most wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful day of the year!
At this point in the show all the misfit themes are coming to a climax. We see misfits seeking community, we see empathy as one misfit identifies with another, and, finally, we see one misfit seeking to act as savior. A misfit to save the misfits. A misfit Messiah.
But the theology of Rudolph takes its most radical, surprising, and extreme turn when the personification of evil, The Abominable Snowman, comes back from death in a quirky resurrection event--Bumble's Bounce!--as a peaceable creature who is also in need of loving community. Apparently, this "evil" creature is also a misfit. And the hint is that he's "abominable" because he's been marginalized and without community.
So, summarizing all this, I learned from Rudolph this important lesson about Christmas: Something about Christmas means misfits have a place, a community, a home. Or, rephrased, Christmas means that there are no more misfits.
But I was still puzzled as a child. From How the Grinch Stole Christmas I learned that Christmas was more than presents and Christmas trees. And from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer I learned that Christmas had something to do with misfits finding a place of love. But in both shows the reason behind it all remained elusive. Why do misfits have a home? And what does being a misfit have to do with Christmas? Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer never says.
So I was quite puzzled. But luckily, there was more TV to watch! And I finally got my answers in a speech delivered by a boy who loved to carry a blue blanket...
Lesson #3: The True Meaning of Christmas
A Charlie Brown Christmas
After the hints about Christmas from the Grinch and Rudolph I finally turned to that trusted friend Charlie Brown.
In A Charlie Brown Christmas Charlie Brown is struggling to find out why Christmas is so depressing. He seeks advice from this local psychiatrist, Lucy, who gets him to direct the school Christmas play.
Well, this doesn't go very well. Eventually, Charlie Brown is rejected as director and asked instead to go buy a Christmas tree for the play.
Most of the symbolism in A Charlie Brown Christmas focuses on the tree he picks out. Out of all the shiny, bright artificial trees Charlie Brown picks a real but forlorn little tree that isn't much more than a branch.
Charlie Brown takes this tree/branch back to the cast and they laugh at both him and the tree. This ridicule pushes Charlie Brown over the edge and he finally screams, "Would someone please tell me the true meaning of Christmas!!!!!" At which point Linus steps forward.
But before we hear Linus's answer, let's reflect on the symbol of the forlorn little Christmas tree. It's a humble little tree, not much to look at. And it's rejected and despised by men. And yet, it is real. All those flashy other trees are dead, cold, and fake. They are empty and hollow. But this fragile little tree is REAL. It's fragile, but real.
And all this taught me that whatever Christmas is about, it is about something that is humble, about something fragile and weak, about something that is despised, marginalized, and overlooked. It is life, it's real, but it's so humble that it is easily overlooked and passed over. Further, its humility makes it a stone of stumbling, a scandal, and a reason for offense.
So, to recap, these are all the lessons I learned about Christmas from watching TV:
I learned that Christmas was MORE and that it had something to do with finding community.
I learned that, because of Christmas, there were no more misfits, no more outsiders or marginalized ones.
I learned about empathy, compassion, and that Messiahs might be misfits.
I learned about how community can be the route for the redemption of evil.
And here with Charlie Brown, I learned that the humility of Christmas makes it oft overlooked and despised.
But to this point in all this TV viewing no one ever connected the dots among all these things. No one had spoken the word that explained just what all this stuff had to do with Christmas. So I perfectly understood why Charlie Brown screamed "Would someone please tell me the true meaning of Christmas!!!!!"
Well, Charile Brown and I finally got our answer. Linus steps forward and explains it all:
May there be peace on earth and good will toward all. Merry Christmas.
A few months ago I was talking to Ann, our administrative coordinator in our Department. Ann was teaching the first Beatitude that night--"Blessed are the poor in spirit"--at church to a class of children. Ann was asking me what it means to be "poor in spirit" and how one might communicate that to children.
My response was this.
Jesus wasn't saying that we should be poor in spirit. Jesus doesn't say "be poor in spirit." Jesus says the poor in spirit are blessed. No doubt we should be poor in spirit, but I don't think Jesus's message in the Beatitudes is moral.
What Jesus is telling us in the Beatitude is where the Kingdom of God is located.And it's located Jesus says, among the poor in spirit.
So your job isn't to be poor in spirit. There are plenty of people who are already poor in spirit. Your job is to see that the poor in spirit--those who because of their marginalized status in the world come to depend upon God--are blessed, as the location where the Kingdom of God is to be found.
Christianity, I said to Ann, isn't fundamentally about morality. Christianity, I said, is fundamentally about learning to see.
That is what Jesus said, over and over.
The Kingdom is near. The Kingdom is at hand. The Kingdom is in your midst.
But the Kingdom is small and unnoticed, like a mustard seed. Hidden, like a treasure buried in a field.
The Kingdom is right in front of us. Right here. Right now.
I've been thinking about an image in this well-known text:
2 Timothy 4.6-8
For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
I am being poured out like a drink offering.
In a post I wrote a few years ago I observed that love is the "allocation of our dying." But I'm struck now that a more biblical image for what I was trying to describe is Paul's image, being poured out.
Love is being poured out as a drink offering for others.
In light of recent world events our friend Kim Fabricius has updated his hymn "Migrant Jesus, at the border" which originally appeared online at Ben Myer's Faith and Theology blog.
Migrant Jesus, at the border
(Suggested Tune: Drakes Broughton)
Migrant Jesus, at the border,
refugee of fear and hate,
you’re a threat to law and order,
nightmare of the nation-state.
Child of Israel, fleeing soldiers,
from the Jordan to the Nile,
were your parents passport-holders,
were you welcomed with a smile?
Home from Egypt, Spirit-breathing,
in the towns of Galilee,
how you had the people seething
when you preached the Jubilee.
At the margins, far from center,
where you met the ostracized,
even friends weren’t keen to enter
conversations that you prized.
After Paris, shock and panic
at the threat of terrorists
tempt us to become satanic,
turning open hands to fists.
Ease our fears, Lord, banish hatred
of the outcast and the odd;
help us see the single-sacred:
face of stranger – face of God.
Migrant Jesus, at the border,
risen victim who commands,
“Love me in the least of others,”
make this place your promised land.
Behold the father is his daughter's son,
The bird that built the nest is hatch'd therein,
The old of years an hour hath not outrun,
Eternal life to live doth now begin,
The word is dumb, the mirth of heaven doth weep,
Might feeble is, and force doth faintly creep.
O dying souls! behold your living spring!
O dazzled eyes! behold your sun of grace!
Dull ears attend what word this word doth bring!
Up, heavy hearts, with joy your joy embrace!
From death, from dark, from deafness, from despairs,
This life, this light, this word, this joy repairs.
Gift better than Himself God doth not know,
Gift better than his God no man can see;
This gift doth here the giver given bestow,
Gift to this gift let each receiver be:
God is my gift, Himself He freely gave me,
God's gift am I, and none but God shall have me.
Man alter'd was by sin from man to beast;
Beast's food is hay, hay is all mortal flesh;
Now God is flesh, and lies in manger press'd,
As hay the brutest sinner to refresh:
Oh happy field wherein this fodder grew,
Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew!
This last week out at the prison bible study I led the inmates through an unlikely advent meditation. Our focus was on Piss Christ, the controversial photograph by Andres Serrano.
As I describe in my book Unclean, in 1987 the photographer Andres Serrano unveiled his controversial work Piss Christ. Piss Christ was a photograph of a crucifix submerged in a mixture of blood and urine. The work broke into public consciousness in 1989 when members of the US Senate expressed outrage that Serrano had received $15,000 from the American National Endowment for the Arts. Senators called the work “filth,” “blasphemous,” and “abhorrent.” One Senator said, “In naming it, [Serrano] was taunting the American people. He was seeking to create indignation. That is all right for him to be a jerk but let him be a jerk on his own time and with his own resources. Do not dishonor our Lord.” Later, in 1997, the National Gallery in Melbourne, Australia was closed when members of a Christian group attacked and damaged Piss Christ.
Beyond the content of the photograph what really offends is the name, the juxtaposition of the word "piss" with "Christ." What is blasphemous is the contact between something holy and something defiling.
Piss contaminates the Christ.
This is an example of the attribution called negativity dominance in judgments of contamination. That is, when the pure comes in contact with the contaminant the pure becomes polluted. The negative dominates over the positive. The power is not with the pure but sits with the pollutant.
This is why the Pharisees see Jesus becoming defiled when he eats with tax collectors and sinners. The pollutant--the tax collectors and sinners--defiles Jesus, the pure. The negative dominates over the positive. The pollutant is the stronger force. Thus it never occurs to the Pharisees, because it is psychologically counter-intuitive, that Jesus's presence might sanctify or purify those sinners he is eating with. Because pollution doesn't work that way.
Thus, in the contact between urine and Jesus in Piss Christ we instinctively judge the negative to be stronger than the positive. Thus the shock. Thus the blasphemy.
But the real blasphemy just might be this: That we think urine is stronger than Christ. That we instinctively--and blasphemously--believe that the defilement of our lives is the strongest force in the universe. Stronger even than the grace of God.
It never occurs to us that Christ is stronger than the "piss" of our lives.
I looked at the men in the study and said, This is the scandal of the Incarnation. This is the scandal of Christmas. That God descended into the piss, shit and darkness of your life. And the piss, shit and darkness did not overcome it.
I know, I told the men, that this is so very hard to believe. That Jesus goes into the darkest. most disgusting, most defiling corners of our lives. This, all by itself, is hard to believe. But even harder to believe is that Jesus is stronger than that polluting, shameful, defiling darkness.
That is the scandal of Christmas.
John 1.14a, 5
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
The story of the incarnation is more subversive than the most subversive art. It's hard to be more transgressive than Christmas. Consider Beth Williamson's analysis of Piss Christ:
What are we to make of this work: what are we to understand by it, and how can we interpret it?
Most obviously were enraged by the combination of the most iconic image of Christianity—the Crucified Christ—with human bodily fluid, and felt that this work set out deliberately to provoke viewers to outrage. The artist almost certainly aimed to provoke a reaction, but what reaction?
The fact that urine is involved is crucial here. But was the use of urine simply intended, as some of Serrano’s detractors have claimed, to cause offense? Had the artist deliberately set out to show disrespect to this religious image, by placing it in urine? Some felt this was tantamount to urinating on the crucifix.
I would suggest that, even if some viewers and commentators feel that it was the artist’s intention, or part of his intention, to be offensive, there are also other ways to interpret this work...
The process of viewing the Crucified Christ through the filter of human bodily fluids requires the observer to consider all the ways in which Christ, as both fully divine and full human, really shared in the base physicality of human beings. As a real human being Christ took on all the characteristics of the human body, including its fluids and secretions. The use of urine here can therefore force the viewer to rethink what it meant for Christ to be really and fully human.
God had a body. That is about as transgressive as you can get. So transgressive that many Christians, now and throughout history, have passionately resisted and banished the thought. It's the same impulse that will cause many to denounce this post.
Christmas is so hard to believe that most Christians don't believe it.
But the Word became flesh. God dwelt among us. And still does. Even in the piss. Especially in the piss.
Immanuel.
I looked at the men in the prison and paused. I wanted them to hear this. Because there is some real darkness in their lives. Darkness we rarely speak about.
I looked at them and said:
The meaning of the Incarnation is that God has descended into the piss and shit of your lives. And that God is stronger than that darkness.
Do you believe this? Because I know it is so very, very hard to believe.
You want to believe that your foulness, all the shit in your life, is the strongest thing there is. The greatest and final truth about your life.
It's so hard to believe what I'm telling you because it feels like blasphemy.
But it's not. It is not blasphemy.
It is the story of the Incarnation. It is the Word becoming flesh. It is the story of God's love for you.
I hope you have had a blessed start to the Advent season this week.
I also hope you enjoyed during the year the Friday "Unpublished" series where I shared on Fridays scraps and bits of material I left unpublished over the years. Starting in January I'll be starting up a new thing on Fridays. More about that after the New Year.
Between now and then, during the weeks of Advent, I'll be using Fridays to post previously published material related to Advent and Christmas. Many of these have been popular posts so I wanted new readers to see them but I also didn't want to fill the week up with older material. So I'll have those posts come out on Fridays starting tomorrow.
Among other things we talk about doubt, humor speaking truth to power, holding onto church, how faith changes over time, progressive heresies, the New Perspective on Paul and N.T. Wright's furniture.
In light of my posts this week I wanted to make another comment about how I think The Slavery of Death explains a lot about what is going on today in American Christianity regarding our debates about accepting Syrian refugees in the US.
The Slavery of Death is a theological and psychological meditation on this text from Hebrews:
Hebrews 2.14-15
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
In this passage the power of the Devil in our lives is described as our slavery to the fear of death. As 1 John tells us, fear is the enemy of love. Consequently, perfect love must cast out fear.
As I describe in The Slavery of Death our fear of death manifests in one of two ways, what psychologists call basic anxiety and neurotic anxiety.
In the affluent West, where our culture is characterized by a "denial of death"--a culture where we like to pretend, due to modern medicine and our technological wizardry that we are immune to death--our slavery to the fear of death is mostly neurotic. We strive, in the words of Henri Nouwen, to be relevant, spectacular or powerful in our quest to live a meaningful and significant life in the face of death. If you looked in the mirror today to check your appearance or checked your Facebook, Twitter or blog accounts to see who was paying attention to you, well, that's your neurotic death anxiety at work. That's the power of the devil in your life. That's your slavery to the fear of death.
But from time to time in the West we also face basic death anxiety. In these instances we fear death directly and straightforwardly. After the Paris terror attacks we all felt a surge of this basic death anxiety. Our fears became less about self-esteem and more about physical security.
And as the fear of death fell upon us so did the power of the Devil.
Gripped by fear our capacities for love, compassion and hospitality quickly dried up and evaporated. Perfect love, battling hard to cast out fear, is now on life-support. If not already dead and flat-lined.
And the words "cast out" are prophetically appropriate. Again, in the words of Hebrews fear is the power of the Devil. And America is in dire need of an exorcism.
As I point out in The Slavery of Death and in Unclean, love involves opening yourself up to risk. And risk involves fear and uncertainty.
There are no guarantees with love. That doesn't mean you act recklessly or foolishly. But it does mean that doing the loving thing, the compassionate thing, the humane thing involves facing down legitimate fears and a willingness to live with very real risks.
The fog of fear, legitimate and real concerns over safety and security, is the dark spell the Devil casts to bewitch the Children of Light, the diabolical alchemy that transforms gentle and kind people into the Children of Darkness.
I hope you've had a blessed start to the Advent season.
Given my post yesterday about philoxenia, the biblical word for hospitality meaning the "love of strangers," and the current debates in America about extending hospitality to refugees, I thought I'd repost some reflections about one of my favorite Advent/Christmas paintings, Luc Olivier Merson's Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1879).
I think this is a prophetic piece of artwork given the current political climate in America.
I love Rest on the Flight into Egypt for a couple of reasons. First, the scene is haunting and full of fatigue. The holy family is displaced, they are refugees fleeing violence, like so many in the world today.
Joseph is exhausted, asleep on the desert floor. One can imagine the mental and physical strain he is under trying to get his family to safety, hoping for welcome and protection in a foreign land.
But will these refugees fleeing violence find that welcome and protection when they arrive at the borders of that foreign land? Or will they face hostility, paranoia and rejection?
Will the Christ child be turned away by immigration control?
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 displaced by violence.
May Rest on the Flight into Egypt guide your prayers this Advent season.
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Richard Beck
Welcome to the blog of Richard Beck, author and professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University (beckr@acu.edu).
