I'm a weird person, theologically speaking. I'm a person who believes in the universal reconciliation of all things who likes to talk about hell, damnation and judgment. You can blame George MacDonald for the former, and Johnny Cash for latter.

How can that combination make any sense?

Well, one way to do it is adopt a purgatorial view of hell, hell as purification. But the other way to think about it is to borrow from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's contrast between the ultimate and the penultimate.

The end and/or culmination of all things is the "ultimate," the final and last season of history when "God will be all in all" (1 Cor. 15.28).

Before the ultimate is the penultimate, the season before final judgment and the "new heavens and the new earth." The ultimate is in our future, today we live in the penultimate, in the time before the end and/or renewal of all things.

With that distinction in mind, let me make an observation about damnation and hell.

Strong language about damnation and hell--"God's gonna cut you down" in the words of Johnny Cash--is proper to the penultimate. During the penultimate the language of hell and damnation names God's judgment upon history, God's anger and pathos in the face of human violence and wickedness. The language of damnation and hell is the language of prophetic indictment and rebuke. We need this language in the penultimate to resist and speak against the darkness.

The trouble comes when we shift hell and damnation from the penultimate to the ultimate. You lose the prophetic register when hell is shifted from the penultimate to the ultimate. Saying "God's gonna cut you down" in the penultimate is harsh but spoken in hope, to encourage repentance. Think of Jonah preaching "God's gonna cut you down" to Nineveh. The language of damnation turned Nineveh. By contrast, speaking of hell and damnation in ultimate terms is hopeless. There's no chance for repentance when hell is in the ultimate. When hell is in the ultimate damnation becomes The End.

So all that to say, when I speak about damnation and hell I'm speaking in the penultimate, singing in the prophetic key. I'm saying "God's gonna cut you down" to the wicked and the violent.

When, however, I speak about the reconciliation of all things, I'm speaking of the ultimate, about the end of all things when, in the words of Julian of Norwich, "All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

I'm always struck on Christian social media how so much time is devoted to celebrating Advent but not Christmas. There's so much writing and reflection about Advent leading up to Christmas and then, after December 25th, nary a peep.

After Christmas day, the trees come down at home and off church stages. Most churches didn't sing Christmas carols yesterday or have a Christmas-themed sermon, even though December 29 is smack in the middle of the Christmas season. And so is next Sunday, as a matter of fact, January 5th. Seriously, how many churches will be singing Christmas carols on January 5th?

I find it all quite puzzling, this strange half-effort to recover the liturgical calendar. Push, push, push to celebrate Advent, followed by a complete failure and lack of interest in celebrating Christmastide, the full Twelve Days of the Christmas season (or the eight days of the octave if you're a Catholic).

(Yes, I know that properly liturgical churches celebrate the full Christmas season. The churches I'm talking about in this post are those that work hard to acknowledge and celebrate the liturgical calendar, like with Advent, but who then fail in odd and confusing ways, like celebrating Advent and ignoring Christmas.)

I try not to be too much of a a grump about all this, but I do find it strange how so many churches work so hard and intentionally to celebrate Advent only to totally give up on Christmas. Seems strange to ignore the entire point of the season.

In the final moments of The Divine Comedy the Pilgrim looks upon God, which he sees as a great circle of light. And beholding God, he ponders a question:

so did I strive with this new mystery:
I yearned to know how could our image fit
into that circle, how could it conform...

How can we participate in the Life of God, how can we be a part of the Light?

But the Pilgrim's intellect is thwarted by the mystery:

but my own wings could not take me so high...

And then, a revelation, a final grace! The Pilgrim's sight is cleared and he is given his answer in the final lines of the poem. The ending of The Divine Comedy:

then a great flash of understanding struck
my mind, and suddenly its wish was granted.

At this point power failed high fantasy
but, like a wheel in perfect balance turning,
I felt my will and my desire impelled

by the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.

How can we conform to the Light? By having both our will and desire impelled by the Love that moves the sun and the stars.

This is Dante's mystical vision, the theology he has been expounding for the entire Comedy. All the movement in creation, especially the movement of our hearts and minds, is an expression of our desire for God. All of creation moves because it is restlessly searching and longing for God. Love moves the sun and the stars. Love moves the rose and the rain. Love moves the breeze and the kiss. And union with God happens when our will and desire, when all of our movements, become united with the Source of Love, where God's love is my love and my love is God's love.

Love is all around us, moving the stars, flowers, rain, and your heart and mind, drawing all things toward Itself. Seeking, seeing, and conforming to this Love is the great adventure of life and the message of The Divine Comedy.

When we think of salvation, most Protestants think of the crucifixion of Jesus. We're saved because the death of Jesus is an atoning sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins.

This is true. Salvation involves the forgiveness of sins. But there's also a way Christmas saves us as well.

According to the church fathers, the Incarnation saves us ontologically.

Definition note: "ontology" is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. So when I say Christmas saves us ontologically I'm saying that God does something to human being, to the nature and mode of our existence. Crudely, God saves "what we are made of." Specifically, after the Fall, humanity was in a weakened ontological state. We were separated from God, and therefore vulnerable to the forces of death, decay, and dissolution. As Athanasius describes the situation in On the Incarnation, "For the nature of created things, having come into being from nothing, is unstable, and is weak and mortal when considered by itself."

Consequently, separated from God humanity was dissolving, fading away. As Athanasius says, "For these reasons, then, with death holding greater sway and corruption remaining fast against human beings, the race of humans was perishing, and the human being, made rational and in the image, was disappearing, and the work made by God was being obliterated."

So, our predicament here was ontological. Constitutionally, human being was unstable, weak, mortal. We were fading, disappearing, on the road to oblivion.

But on Christmas, in the Incarnation, God reunites Himself, through the Son, with human being. When the Word is made flesh an ontological stabilization occurs, anchoring human being and saving us from dissolution and oblivion. As Athanasius says,

So seeing that all created nature according to its own definition is in a state of flux and dissolution, therefore to prevent this happening and the universe dissolving back into nothing, after making everything by his own eternal Word and bringing creation into existence, [God] did not abandon it to be carried away and suffer through its own nature, lest it run the risk of returning to nothing...lest it suffer what would happen...a relapse into non-existence, if it were not protected by the Word.

And that's how Christmas saves us. Through the Incarnation, human being is reunited with God and is now stabilized and protected by the Word.

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.

--Isaiah 9.2,3b,4a,6,7

An Advent meditation from last year:

I was reading through the Annunciation text in the gospel of Luke. Specifically, my attention was caught by Mary's reaction to Gabriel's famous "Hail Mary" greeting:

Luke 1.26-30
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.

And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God."

Here's what struck me. Notice what perplexes Mary. It's not the angel, it's the greeting. Mary "pondered what sort of greeting this might be."

Ponder that. An angel has just appeared to Mary. You'd think that would be the big shocker. But it's not, it's what the angel says that perplexes her.

And just what does the angel say to her? This: "Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Mary seems to doubt that she is favored by God. As evidence for this doubt, notice how Gabriel has to say it again to reassure her: “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God."

I don't have any big insight about having noticed this, that Mary seems to think she's not or hasn't been favored of God. Maybe it's a sign of Mary's deep humility. Or maybe it's a sign of Mary's deep humiliation, how she felt so far down the ladder of favor and status that hearing that she was favored just didn't compute.

And maybe that tells us something about why Mary was chosen by God. Mary was at the absolute bottom, so far down that the greeting "Hail, favored one" would have been deeply and profoundly shocking and perplexing.

Grace interrupts the shame of the world to fall upon the very least of these.

Christmas is all about traditions. And one of the traditions I've celebrated here on the blog is reposting a series I wrote way back in 2007 entitled "Everything I Learned about Christmas I Learned from TV."

It's been a few years since I shared that post, one of the most popular things I've written on the blog. So, if you're new to the blog, welcome to an old Experimental Theology Christmas tradition:

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, Charlie 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.

It is quiet now in the fields
where the grass was bathed in song.
And empty now the sky
that held angelic hosts and golden light.
Nothing now, but the bleats of ewes
looking for their lambs,
and the soft breeze swaying
the branches and leaves.
What did we hear?
The fire burns low
as the shepherd's eyes
stare upward, unsleeping,
into the stars.
What did we see?
No clear answer appears,
just a weight of knowing,
that a promise made
has been fulfilled.

I'm in Erie, PA right now for the holidays. If you're in the Erie area, the Erie Church of Christ and I are hosting an evening on Monday night entitled "Trains, Jesus, and Murder: A Johnny Cash Christmas."

For the evening I'll be sharing reflections from my recent book, along with playing some Johnny Cash songs, giving it all a seasonal, Christmas twist. I hope you can join us!

The details of the event:

Date: December 23
Time: 7:00-8:00 pm
Location: 2317 West Grandview Blvd, Erie, PA 16506

In the final Canto of The Divine Comedy, St. Bernard prays for the Pilgrim, that he may receive the grace to finish his journey and look directly upon God. Our goal, in the words of St. Bernard, is "to turn our eyes upon the Primal Love."

The culmination of The Divine Comedy, then, is the Pilgrim finally beholding God. It's been quite a journey! Descending through hell, scaling Mt. Purgatory, and ascending through the heavens. All to reach what is called the Beatific Vision.

As the Pilgrim beholds God he first sees a light that holds all of creation in love:

O grace abounding and allowing me to dare
to fix my gaze on the Eternal Light,
so deep my vision was consumed in It!

I saw how it contains withing its depths
all things bound in a single book by love
of which creation is the scattered leaves...

Looking more closely into the Light, the Pilgrim then sees it as three circles of differently colored light, each the same circumference in the same space:

Within Its depthless clarity of substance
I saw the Great Light shine into three circles
in three clear colors bound in one same space.

This is Dante's attempt to give us a visual picture of the Trinity. Which a pretty impossible task, even for a poet. Dante is very aware of this, as he has the Pilgrim declare:

How my weak words fall short of my conception,
which is itself so far from what I saw
that "weak" is much too weak a word to use!

Word do fail when it comes to the Trinity. I used to think that this was because the Trinity was a pointless exercise in abstract metaphysics. I've changed my opinion about that. I've come to believe that the Trinity is the doctrine that allows Christians to confess that "God is love." The love that is the Divine Community of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is Being Itself. Like Dante, I might not be able to explain that to anyone. But I believe in this Love more than I believe in anything.

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.

As I describe in Unclean, 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.

In a similar way, when we observe 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.

I looked at the men in the prison and said, "This is the scandal of the Incarnation. This is the scandal of Christmas. That God descended into the darkness and defilement of your life, and that darkness and defilement 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 shameful corners of our lives. This, all by itself, is almost impossible to believe. But even harder to believe is that Jesus is stronger than that polluting, defiling darkness.

That is the scandal of Christmas.

John 1.14a, 15
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

In the final analysis, Christmas 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.

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.

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 midst of our shame, into the piss and the shit of our lives, and that God is stronger than our darkness.

But do you believe this? Because I know it is so very, very hard to believe.

We want to believe that our foulness, our shame, our sin, is the strongest force in our lives, the greatest and final truth about us.

It's so hard to believe what I'm telling you, because it really does feel like blasphemy.

But it's not blasphemy. This is the story of the Incarnation, of the Word becoming flesh. This is the story of God's love for you.

As shocking and offensive as it may be, this is the story of Christmas.

As I read Nathan Schneider's Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse I kept making notes of the tensions that I felt kept coming up in the movement. I find these tensions educational as they reveal, I think, the tensions we all keep bumping into politically and organizationally as we seek to create a better world. I think one of the reasons we keep stalling out in our efforts at making things better is that we keep getting stuck in the mire of these competing agendas and visions.

So, here's a list of the tensions I observed in reading Thank You, Anarchy. See if any of these sound familiar:

1. Horizontal versus Vertical Organization: How do we distribute power and access in our organizations, society and politics?

2. Process versus Progress: How do we balance good process with making quick, efficient progress? And can process ever just be the end in itself?

3. Class versus Identity Politics: When thinking about class and economics versus identity politics (ethnicity, gender, sex, etc.), which should be the primary lens and lever of change when it comes to oppressive structures and systems? Should be care more about inclusion or economics? 

4. Smaller versus Larger Government: In the debate between socialists and anarchists, are our social ills best solved by socialism (a larger, more regulating government) or by local communitarianism?

5. Art versus Organizing: Is social change best achieved through artistic and provocative imagination, improvisation, and demonstration or through the toil of grass-roots community organizing?

6. Non-Violence vs Violence: Should social change always be pursued non-violently (toward both people and property) or is non-violence a tactic that can be dropped for other tactics that involve violence and/or destruction of property?

To be sure, these were the tensions of Occupy Wall Street and might not be found in other locations or debates. But I bump into these tensions pretty regularly. And, of course, some of these don't have to be forced into an either/or. 

The relevance of all this for the church is in how I envision the church as being "counter-cultural."

For example, do I think of the local church as an expression of art (a sacramental expression that isn't trying to be "effective" but point our imaginations toward an eschatological future) or as a form of community organizing and networking to deliver tangible material goods to its members?

Another example: Is the church a voting block to help America become more socialist, or is the church supposed to ignore the government and become a local community who meets the needs of its members, from health insurance to housing?

Another: Should the church prioritize poverty or progressive visions of "inclusion"?

And so on.

I don't expect there are too many church leaders who spend time reading about anarchist movements for insights into the church. But one of the reasons I do this has to do with horizontal versus vertical organization.

The Holy Grail of anarchist movements is a radically horizontal organization. Most churches, by contrast, tend to work with a vertical organization, at least partially. At the top is an executive pastor or minister and some sort of leadership, eldership board. Power and control then flows down vertically, from the top to the bottom.

What interests me here is how, for most churches, we can't really imagine ourselves organizing our communities any other way but vertically. Our vision of church is held captive by a corporate imagination. There has to be an Org Chart and a hierarchical power arrangement. Somebody has to be "in charge."
  
Given this, one of the benefits of reflecting on anarchist movements like Occupy Wall Street, is how hard anarchists push against verticality, how they imagine and experiment with all sorts of ways to organize large groups of people horizontally. To be sure, as Nathan Schneider recounts in Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse, struggling for horizontality is a fragile business and takes hard work. Sometimes, to make "progress," you just want someone to be in charge and make a decision.

But in many ways, as Schneider shares in his book, progress is simply the process of fighting for and creating the horizontal structure. Notoriously, Occupy didn't make concrete policy demands. So it was unclear what Occupy "wanted." But as became clear, what Occupy wanted was the horizontal vision of social and economic relations it was experimenting with, envisioning, and demonstrating. What Occupy wanted was Occupy. The people wanted American life to be more inclusive, democratic, and participatory. The "demand" was for more horizontality.

Now, while we could debate the good and bad of Occupy Wall Street, and I'm sure reader opinions will vary, what I find helpful about meditating about that movement was how I wish the church had a little more thirst, hunger, and desire for radical horizontality. Again, like in my Part 1 observation about how we can't imagine church without electricity, technology, and amplification, we also can't imagine church without vertical organization and hierarchy. We just can't imagine an organizational alternative.

And yet, there are alternatives. And even if we think we have to have some verticality (and the struggles of Occupy lend themselves to such a conclusion), couldn't the church push for more and more for horizontality? Sure, criticize Occupy all you want, but who do you think is trying harder to obey Jesus, the anarchists or the church?:

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave." (Matthew 20.25-27)

I recently read Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse by Nathan Schneider, his first-hand account of the Occupy Wall Street movement that took up residence in Zuccotti Park in September 2011 inspiring similar protests across the country and world. Here's the book description from Amazon:

Thank You, Anarchy is an up-close, inside account of Occupy Wall Street’s first year in New York City, written by one of the first reporters to cover the phenomenon. Nathan Schneider chronicles the origins and explosive development of the Occupy movement through the eyes of the organizers who tried to give shape to an uprising always just beyond their control. Capturing the voices, encounters, and beliefs that powered the movement, Schneider brings to life the General Assembly meetings, the chaotic marches, the split-second decisions, and the moments of doubt as Occupy swelled from a hashtag online into a global phenomenon.

A compelling study of the spirit that drove this watershed movement, Thank You, Anarchy vividly documents how the Occupy experience opened new social and political possibilities and registered a chilling indictment of the status quo. It was the movement’s most radical impulses, this account shows, that shook millions out of a failed tedium and into imagining, and fighting for, a better kind of future.

I enjoy being a student of resistance movements and anarchist communities because I think the church is a similar type of community and movement. Consequently, reading about these sorts of movements and communities expands your imagination for the church.

For example, Occupy famously used the Human or People's Microphone rather than electrical amplification during their large, outdoor General Assemblies. Click to read how it works, and here's a video example. The basic idea is that the speaker would speak from the stage and those within hearing distance would turn and repeat what was said to those behind them, who would then turn to repeat it to those behind them, a cascade until the message was communicated to those on the edges of the assembly.

I'm not suggesting that churches use the Human Mic, but the Human Mic does challenge the unthinking, default assumption at work in most churches that we MUST have electrical amplification to do church. Pondering the Human Mic exposes how the default in our churches is to turn to technological and material infrastructure rather than to the community itself.

Sadly, our infrastructure requires money rather than love.

"The Watchman"

The icy, skeleton fingers of air
in the coldest part of the night
claw through the tattered,
worn cloak of the watchman.
It is the empty still moment
before dawn,
when the coals wheeze
a last orange breath,
snapped to life by the razor wind.
His eyes survey the thin, distant line,
waiting for the bloom of dawn.
All his life, all our lives.
Waiting. Waiting
until he spies, among the rock,
a shadow running, fast.
He squints, stands
for the first time in a life
of bored, frozen, lonely hours.
The horizon flushes red.
His voice shouts, raw and hoarse,
with the question that will crack the universe:
What tidings, herald, do you bring?

In Canto XXXI, beholding the Rose of the Elect, the Pilgrim turns to ask Beatrice a question. But Beatrice is gone.

Beatrice has left the side of the Pilgrim to take her place once again in the Rose, seated among the blessed. Standing in her place is the third and final guide of the Divine Comedy. The Pilgrim finds next to him an old man. This is St. Bernard, mystical theologian and founder of the Cistercian order.

St. Bernard will lead the Pilgrim through the final three Cantos of the Divine Comedy, toward the culminating vision of God. The three guides of the Divine Comedy are often take to represent a progression:

Virgil represented Reason.

Beatrice represented Faith.

And St. Bernard represents Mystical Contemplation. 

For Dante, even faith can only take you so far. Because faith, being faith, isn't direct experience. What the mystics sought, and still seek, is the direct, unmediated encounter with God.

The mystics don't think about God, nor do they believe in God. The mystics see God, directly. And in seeing the mystics don't need ideas, doctrines, or beliefs. The mystics have direct, first-hand experience. The mystics know God. As it says in 1 Corinthians 13:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 

[Picture note: The picture here is Gustave Doré's illustration of the Pilgrim and St. Bernard mystically contemplating the Rose of the Elect being pollinated by the angels. It's one of the most famous illustrations from the Divine Comedy.]

Advent is a great time for deconstruction. Advent is similar to Lent in this regard. During Advent we sit in the experience of exile. During Advent we wait in darkness.

But there's also good stuff for reconstruction during Advent as well. Historically, the church celebrates three "comings" of Jesus. (The word "advent" comes from the Latin adventus, meaning "coming" or "arrival.")

The First Coming of Jesus is in the Incarnation, liturgically celebrated, we know, during the Christmas season, which starts with the Feast of the Nativity (Christmas day) and lasts for twelve days.

The Second Coming of Jesus, sometimes called the Middle Coming, is the entrance of Christ into our hearts and lives. This is your own personal experience of Advent, your particular story of Jesus coming and saving you.

And, finally, the Third Coming of Jesus is the Christian eschatological expectation that Christ will return in glory to set the world right, bringing both justice and peace.

All that to say, there's a lot of writing right now online about the experience of exile, lament and darkness during the season of Advent. All good stuff, but only focusing on one bit of Advent. There's much less writing about the Second and Third Advents. Beyond exile and waiting in darkness, Advent is also a season to reflect on and give thanks for your own salvation story, Jesus coming into your life and saving you. And Advent is also a season of hope, looking forward to the New Heaven and the New Earth where, to echo Julian of Norwich, "all shall be well."

I recently came across this quote from Thomas Aquinas on faith:

For just as, by the habits of the other virtues, man sees what is becoming to him in respect of that habit, so, by the habit of faith, the human mind is directed to assent to such things as are becoming to a right faith...

I'm not enough of an Aquinas scholar to know for sure what he means by "the habit of faith." But it's an arresting phrase.

Aquinas here compares faith to the habits associated with virtues. To review, good habits are virtues and virtues are acquired by good habits. Virtue and spiritual formation go hand in hand.

And yet, we often don't think of faith as a habit, as a product of spiritual formation. Faith seems more attuned to mental assent, believing in things, shifting it away from formation toward intellection.

But what if faith is actually a habit?

The reason I'm interested in thinking about faith as a habit is that I think this is an important insight for people going through a season of religious deconstruction. As I and others have pointed out many times before, deconstruction is often a necessary and vital part of our faith journey. And yet, we also see people leave the faith because of the deconstruction. Frequently, people deconstruct themselves right out of faith.

That almost happened to me. But one of the things that helped me make the turn back toward reconstruction is that I found that faith could be a habit of the mind, a matter of attention, specifically.

For example, during deconstruction you spend a lot of time reading and exposing yourself to skeptical, critical, questioning, and doubting voices, views, arguments and perspectives. This prolonged and exclusive focus on and, frankly, marination in doubt creates a habit of the mind. To stay with the food metaphor, our theological diet can become very unbalanced during seasons of deconstruction. If all you're eating is doubt, well, is it any wonder that your faith becomes unhealthy and sick?

My turn toward reconstruction came when I started varying my diet, reading and exposing myself to joyous, unapologetic, and intellectually stimulating Christian voices. By regularly exposing myself to a more faithful voices I slowly habited myself (if habited is a word) back into faith. During the season of deconstruction I couldn't just will myself to believe. But I could turn my attention, treat myself to a faithful theological diet, and habit myself back into faith.

In short, faith, I've come to think, is a habit as much as it is a matter of belief.

In my Psychology and Christianity class we start off by talking about William James.

I don't jump right into The Varieties of Religious Experience as you might guess. I get to that in Lecture Two. In the first lecture I talk about William James and his philosophical project, pragmatism.

Many of my students don't quite know how to approach or think about religion from a scientific, psychological perspective. Faith is something to be believed, not studied under a microscope. So to help my students make this transition I introduce them to pragmatism.

According to William James and the pragmatists, truth works, truth does things in the world. To quote James, "the ultimate test for us of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires."

This is a different frame for my students. My students tend to frame the issue of religious truth as a metaphysical question. James shifts them away from metaphysics into a pragmatic frame. We might not be able, as psychologists, to adjudicate between religious claims on metaphysical grounds. We're psychologists, not theologians. But as psychologists, we can ask and answer the pragmatic question: What sort of conduct does this religious belief dictate or inspire?

And we don't have to focus so narrowly on behavior. A psychologist can also ask, What sorts of thoughts and feelings are associated with this particular religious belief?

Specifically, is belief X associated with love or hate? Joy or fear? Welcoming of difference or xenophobia? Feelings of grace or feelings of guilt? And on and on.

A psychological approach to religious faith, I tell my students, focuses on these pragmatic questions, the relationship between belief and the fruits of those beliefs.

We can ask this question: What sort of human being does this belief produce?

"Prophecy"

Old man,
it's getting late.
Dream your dream,
and tell me what you see.
Do you see the child playing
by the cobra's den?
Is the lion eating straw
like an ox?
Can it be that the wolf and the lamb
are living together as friends?
Tell me, old man,
is it true?
Are there no more swords
in the world?

Beatrice leads the Pilgrim upward through the heavenly spheres, eventually reaching the ninth and final heaven, the Primum Mobile. The Primum Mobile is the abode of the angels, and as the highest heaven is the sphere moved directly by God. Dante sees the angels as nine concentric rings of fire, each giving off sparks.

Above the Primum Mobile, Beatrice brings the Pilgrim into the Empyrean, the abode of God, above and beyond all physical heavens.

And there, in the Empyrean, the Pilgrim beholds the Elect, all the souls of the faithful. The elect are seated in light in the shape of a rose. Above the rose is God, and between God and the rose are angels, pollinating the rose, like bees, with God's peace and love:

So now, appearing to me in the form
of a white rose was Heaven's sacred host,
those whom with His own blood Christ made his bride,

while the other host [the angels]--that soaring see and sing
the glory of the One who stirs their love,
the goodness which made them great as they are,

like bees that in a single motion swarm
and dip into the flowers, then return
to heaven's hive where their toil turns to joy--

descended all at once on that great bloom
of precious petals, and then flew back up
to where its source of love forever dwells.

Their faces showed the flow of living flame,
their wings of gold, and all the rest of them
whiter than any snow that falls to earth.

As they entered the flower, tier to tier,
each spread the peace and ardor of the love
they gathered with their wings in flight to Him. 

People ponder a lot about what heaven is going to be like. Dante's vision is that heaven is like a flower, pollinated eternally by angels with peace and love.

Below is our final clip from our evening at Host this summer, where I shared reflections from my latest book Trains, Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash and David Benjamin Blower played Cash covers.

In the video below we turn to the final creative years of Cash's life, his work with Rick Rubin and the American Recordings albums. The song I focus on is "Hurt," Cash's iconic cover of Trent Reznor's song, written by Reznor in the midst of his own heroin addiction:



One more time, thank you to Paul Milbank, the curator of Host, for capturing the evening on film. I hope you've enjoyed this week sharing in our evening of Trains, Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash.

Below is my favorite clip from our evening at Host.

In my book Trains, Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash I use the music of the Man in Black to describe how the gospel is rooted in solidarity. In the clip below I describe what this looks like by setting up three songs that David plays: "The Man in Black," "San Quentin," and "Sunday Mornin' Coming Down."

Again, it was such a honor to share this evening with David Benjamin Blower, musician, author, and co-host of the Nomad podcast. And again, a big Thank You to Paul Milbank, the curator of Host, for capturing our evening together on film.



Be sure to check out Trains, Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash. One more clip tomorrow from our evening at Host.

Below is a another clip from our evening at Host this summer, where I shared reflections from from my latest book Trains, Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash while the multi-talented David Benjamin Blower--musician, author, and co-host of the Nomad podcast--played Cash covers for us.

Thank you to Paul Milbank, the curator of Host, for capturing the evening on film so that we can share it with you.

In the clip below, I reflect upon the song "Folsom Prison Blues" before David performs:



Be sure to check out Trains, Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash. More tomorrow from our evening at Host.

This summer it was my absolute privilege to attend again the Host gathering on Jersey Island. This was the third Host gathering, and it has proved itself to be one of the most stimulating and soul-filling experiences I've had the honor to share.

The first evening of Host this summer was devoted to an evening of theological reflection and music. My partner for the evening was David Benjamin Blower, musician, author, and co-host of the Nomad podcast.

The evening took its title from my latest book Trains, Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash. I shared theological reflections from the book about the life and musical legacy of the Man and Black, and David played Cash covers. Paul Milbank, the curator of Host, had the event filmed and I'd like to share some clips from the evening.

To start, the introduction to the evening:



Be sure to check out Trains, Jesus and Murder: The Gospel According to Johnny Cash. More clips to come from our evening at Host!

"Exile"

The grit in the mouth
from desert dust.
Dirt in the spit
and the grind on the teeth.
This is what hope tastes like
after the stories have been told
once too often.
Past the exhaustion of longing
there is now only irritation
and anger
and pain.

How long?

The wind snaps over the sands
scattering the sheep over the rocks.
I squint, and lean into the sting
waiting.