(Ir)religiosity

I know it’s a little late for Holy Week fodder, but I’ve been busy over the last week and a half. The following is the text of a devotional I gave Wednesday of Holy Week at Village United Methodist Church, as part of a Holy Week breakfast series. The text that morning was John 15:1-17.

Today’s text is very interesting and even a little puzzling. This section of John’s gospel (chapters 15-16) is part of a larger section scholars have labeled the “Farewell Discourses.” Now, John’s gospel is known for its long, abstract, philosophical discourses and monologues wherein Jesus describes himself as “the bread of life,” “the good shepherd,” and so on. But today’s reading where Jesus likens himself to “the true vine” is the longest monologue in any gospel lasting until 16:17 when the disciples stop to question Jesus.

But even more puzzling is the fact that this section and the whole excursus about the vine and the branches seems to repeat and expound upon everything Jesus said in John 14. In John 14 Jesus says that he is the way, the truth, and the life, that in order to know God one must remain in him, living a new type of imperially subversive life, and he promises that the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, will come when he is gone to help. So, why would Jesus repeat himself in John 15? Why would he go out of his way to further explain himself with the image of the vine and the branches? This happens right after Jesus washes the disciples in John 13 and just before he is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. These are, according to John, Jesus’ last moments with his disciples, his closest friends with whom he has spent the last 3 years. Why would he spend so much time on this?

The fact that Jesus spends so much time here making sure he has made his point tells me that this was very, very important. This was essentially the last time he spoke to his disciples, as a group so whatever he told them here, I believe, is likely the most important part of his message.

And what does he say? He uses the image of a vine and its branches to illustrate the relationship of his followers and himself to God. Now, this is an image we have a hard time relating to, but Jesus’ disciples would have been very closely attuned to it. Grapes, vines, and vineyards were an integral part of their culture. Wine was a staple commodity. So Jesus uses the visceral image to convey his message. Jesus is the vine, God is the vine grower. The disciples—then and now—are the vine branches. God is the source life and ground of being. Jesus serves as the conduit of that life exemplifying and embodying the best possible way to live life. Our trajectory emerges from that, from the life of Jesus. Through Jesus’ example, were are enabled to participate in God’s life and God’s process of creativity and restoration. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches and God is the caretaker. Through relationship with Jesus and synergetic interaction with the divine life, we in time bear fruit.

This was Jesus’ final message to his disciples. This is obviously very important. Finally, to cap it all off Jesus says we are to above all, love one another. Love one another. The last message that Jesus gives to his disciples is about love. It seems so easy, but it is so hard. It is especially hard for us because we use the word ‘love’ to mean a number of things from a personal preference, as in “I love pizza,” to a strong feeling of affection and commitment, as in “I love my wife” to everything in between. We have so many meanings for love that we don’t even know what it means anymore. But Jesus had a very specific meaning for this higher type of love and the best example of that is Jesus’ willingness to nonviolently confront the powers that be knowing that he would likely be executed. To say of his executioners “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” To turn to the terrorist being executed beside him and say “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

When you look closely you see that Jesus entire life was an example of this higher type of love and what Paul Tillich called “ultimate concern for ‘the other.’” Jesus exercised radical love and concern with everyone he came in contact with: tax collectors, prostitutes, the unclean, the damned, the broken hearted, the neglected, the outcast, and the marginalized. Those that society holds at arms’ length, Jesus welcomes with arms wide open (insert cheesy Creed song here). Jesus’ message, at the core was about love, love for God and love for people, because after all, God is love. As the great activist and preacher William Sloane Coffin wrote:

“God is love as Scripture says and that means the revelation is in the relationship. God is love means God is known devotionally not dogmatically. God is love does not clear up old mysteries, it discloses new mystery. God is love is not a truth we can master, it is only one to which we can surrender. Faith is being grasped by the power of love.”

So for Christians love is a verb not a noun. Which presents us with a problem because we Christians like to preach, we like to talk and we like to listen (at least most of us do). We like to read and write books about this gospel business. We like to come up with cute curricula.  We like to plant churches. We like to play the game. But this life of love that we are called to live as branches of the vine, this love that we participate in with God is not something to be heard or talked about. No, instead it is something to be seen, something to be done. It is, as Jesus showed with his life an action and a relationship. “They will know we’re Christians by our love” is much more than a songs title, it is the essence of our faith. If we fail at living out love with our actions, we have failed the entire Christian project. It has become quite cliché to say “actions speak louder than words,” but for disciples of Jesus there isn’t a more powerful truism. Indeed, love wins, but love cannot win if love is not alive. We must bring love alive. We must give love a body, and a face. God grant us the courage to bring love alive.

About 15 years ago, controversial historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan wrote a book about Jesus’ life. It’s a more accessible digest of his much thicker, much more provocative book on the historical Jesus. Rarely, if ever in scholarly, academic books like this do we ever hear about the author’s personal faith journey or catch a glimpse of their spirituality. I think that’s unfortunate. I wish they would write about themselves more often. I understand why they don’t, but I wish they would. Anyway, in the prologue of this book, we catch one of those rare glimpses. Dominic writes a hypothetical dialogue with himself and Jesus about his book that I think especially speaks to the Christian problem of speaking without acting and the tension of love as a noun versus love as a verb. It goes like this:

“I’ve read your book Dominic, and it’s quite good. So now you’re ready to live by my vision and join me in my program?”
“I don’t think I have the courage, Jesus, but I did describe it quite well, didn’t I, and the method was especially good wasn’t it?”
“Thank you, Dominic, for not falsifying the message to suit your own incapacity. That at least is something.”
“Is it enough Jesus?”
“No, Dominic, no it is not?”

Let us pray.

I’m at another ecology conference, this time in Denton at the university of North Texas (PDF file of the schedule here). I don’t know if there will be wifi at the venue tomorrow. If so, I’ll try and liveblog some of the talks. If not, I’ll post some reflections later on.

The following is the manuscript of a speech I will give around 2:00 pm this afternoon during a war protest at Oklahoma City University commemorating the 5th ‘anniversary’ of the US occupation of Iraq.

Five years ago, riding the emotions of 9/11, ‘we the people’ collectively gave our government the benefit of a doubt. We were led to believe we should preemptively attack a sovereign nation in the name of justice and peace. We were given evidence, evidence and intelligence that we know now was manipulated and yes, even fabricated. We were told that not only was Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction, but that he was directly connected to the horrible events on September 11. We now know that was an outright, blatant lie. Our government appealed to our emotions and used a national tragedy as a pretext for an ulterior motive fueled by our addiction to oil and our compulsive obsession with the military-industrial complex.

Now, five long years later, we haven’t brought peace to Iraq or to ourselves. As a result of President Bush’s praised “troop surge,” 2007 proved to be the bloodiest year of the war both for US troops and for the Iraqis. And as we learned earlier this week 4000 of our young men and women have been killed fighting this God forsaken war, 71 of them from our state of Oklahoma. If we’re completely honest with ourselves, we don’t really know how many innocent Iraqi civilians have been killed because as one US general has said, “We don’t do body counts.” Conservative numbers estimate as few as 81,000 Iraqis have been killed since 2003 though that number could exceed several hundred thousand the equivalent to over 35 September 11’s. These are not armed combatants. These are civilians. An additional 2 million Iraqi civilians have been forced to leave the country and 2.5 million remain displaced as a result of our occupation. Almost 30,000 US troops, the number of those sent last year in the surge, have been severely wounded and over 7500 have sustained serious brain trauma. Upon return from the war over 100,000 of our troops have been diagnosed with some sort of mental illness or social disorder and the suicide rate of Iraq veterans had steadily risen since 2003. The average age of those veterans? Twenty-one.

Meanwhile, as our economy is in recession and the markets are falling, we continue to spend around $340 million per day to fund this unjust war, around $4600 per family and just over $1700 per person. And because of this “credit card mentality,” recent studies suggest that before it’s all said and done we will have spent $3 trillion, yes, that’s trillion with a “t,” bombing people in Iraq. But of course we shouldn’t be too worried, because we won’t bear the brunt of that debt. No, that will fall to our children, who’s future we have mortgaged to fund this debacle. Not for the sake of peace, justice or democracy, but for the sole purpose of hegemony, dominance, and the expansion of the American empire.

And so today we gather. ‘We the people’ gather to raise our voice against this glaring injustice and we stand in protest of this heinous atrocity. We stand united for the cause of peace and we stand in solidarity not only with our troops, but with the Iraqi people, who, as we speak are suffering under our occupation. We stand with those that have gone before us as a prophetic witness to ask, “How many more must be killed for a lie? How many more lives must be lost before our government takes responsibility admits they were wrong? How many more must be murdered before we admit that there never was a smoking gun to become a mushroom cloud? How much more death will we allow? How much more blood will be on our hands before we take responsibility?”

And so we have gathered today. We have gathered as ‘we the people’ to stand and affirm a lofty vision of healing, a vision of reconciliation, and above all, an audacious vision of hope. Hope that one day war will not exist as a normative form of public policy and conflict resolution. Hope that one say we will realize that war doesn’t bring true peace, but only the illusion of peace. Hope that one day we will not exploit the value of the weak so that the strong may become stronger. Hope that one day the many will not be oppressed so that the few can live as they wish. Hope that one day foreign lives will be said to have the same amount of value as domestic lives. Hope that one day we will indeed beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Hope that one day justice will roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. And hope that one day we will walk this earth not as enemies and allies, but as sisters and brothers united in our humanity.

We have gathered. We have gathered as ‘we the people’ to stand and let our voices be heard because we believe it is our responsibility to actively resist the injustices done by our government in our name. And to our government we say this: you may represent some of us, but you do not represent all of us. You may wage war against innocents, but you may not do so in our name, you may not do so by our will, and you cannot do so in the name of peace and freedom to further your own political agenda. We will not and we do not comply. Not in our name and not in our country.

At the moment, we’re gearing up for our next election. And as the hype of this election cycle continues to grow many of us will be tempted to become apathetic about this war, to avert our attention and to coronate our new political messiahs, who we hope will change and save the world. Friends, in the midst of the tension that is a presidential election we cannot, we must not, forget about the ongoing suffering and oppression we are perpetuating abroad. We are in the middle of the great moral crisis of our time and we cannot be distracted by the glitz and glamour our election. We cannot be lulled to sleep as innocents are being murdered, whose blood is on our hands, for it is by doing so that we become no better than those that wage war itself. We must push this reality to the forefront of our collective consciousness and of those we elect. We must remain persistent. We must remain vigilant. And we must remain fervently indignant, unwavering in our commitment to prophetic truth, unwavering in our solidarity with the oppressed and the suffering, and unwavering in our hopeful affirmation peace with justice, and reconciliation through healing. We believe that another world is indeed possible. And right here, right now, today, in this moment, we pledge to make that world a reality. That is why we’re here. Thank you very much.

Ok, so not quite YouTube. Viacom won’t allow Comedy Central shows to but posted on YouTube so I had to go to another site. This whole clip is pretty funny albeit long. Fast forward to around 7:20 for an outrageously hilarious Zales commercial parody.

Hillary Clinton compares Rev. Wright to Don Imus. Real classy. Especially given her husband invited Rev. Wright to the White House when he was dealing with the Lewinsky scandal.

Ok, so I stole my title from a Dropkick Murphys song. Good song by the way.

But it’s true. Bonnie mentioned it the other day, so I thought I would too. After submitting applications, taking the God forsaken GRE, and waiting to get acceptance letters in the mail, I finally got some responses. I’ve been accepted at Boston School of Theology and they’ve offered me a nice financial aid package, the best of any other school, and I’m accepting it.

So, sometime late this summer, Bonnie and I will bid Oklahoma farewell for a time and head up to New England. It should be quite an adventure and I’ll try to blog the trip if I can.

If anyone out there is from Boston or lives close by drop me a line and we’ll get together. Maybe you can show me the ropes and we can grab a beer or two.

So that’s the update. Got a busy summer ahead.

Walter Brueggemann on Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Word. This guy knows his stuff and is arguably the definite scholar on the OT, especially the prophets.

Apparently I picked the wrong week to go on sabbatical. Lots happened. Both at home and around the world. Here’s a quick re-cap, though I’m sure most of it is old news to most of you.

The main story of the week: Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “controversial” sermons. Barack Obama’s pastor was brought to the forefront this week and Obama has been lambasted over and over again for it. Quite frankly, I’m sick and tired of hearing the sound byte snippets of Rev. Wright’s sermons–which have been taken out of context and severely misunderstood–played on loop via the corporate news media. It’s quite unpopular to do so, but I stand with Rev. Wright and I agree with him. America needs more Rev. Wright’s daring to speak truth to power; indeed he is more right than he his wrong. As for those that have called for Obama to “leave his church” I would say this: going to church is not about having your ears tickled or your presuppositions confirmed. It’s about being challenged and being pushed beyond normalcy. The idea that one should leave a church to find another once they hear something they disagree with, has led to the current fractured American church. Why do you think we have so many different denominations, sects, and branches? Calling for Obama to leave his church just because his pastors made have made a few “controversial” comments, is asking Obama to distance himself from the church itself. Furthermore, to ask a Christian minister to not be prophetic, to preach only what is safe, or what is popular, is to ask that minister to not be Christian. After all, Jesus would have never been elected; indeed such things got Jesus executed by the nation state.

In response to his being blackballed, Obama gave a speech. Not just any speech, but the speech. The speech that America has needed to hear since Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. This may be the speech that defines Obama. It has already, as of this post, been viewed over 3 million times on YouTube. And of course, since he left the stage, reading the last sentence of his manuscript, the 24-hour, corporate news media propagandists have been picking it apart, ripping him to sheds, and engaging in just what Obama warned us against. I think Jon Stewart puts it very succinctly, “Obama spoke to Americans as though they were adults.” It’s a shame that most of us aren’t. Though it is good to see some people going against the flow in some unlikely places. I won’t go into much of the speech because everyone already has, I would point to a couple of places, here, here and here, that are worth stopping by. I add my “what they said” to that.

After hearing the speech, Bill Richardson endorsed Obama, calling him “a once in a lifetime leader.” Honestly, I wish he (and some who haven’t yet) would’ve done this earlier, but apparently Obama’s speech “clinched it” for him. At least it allowed Obama to end an otherwise tough week on a high note. Of course the Clinton people, downplayed it all, calling the endorsement “insignificant in this environment.” I wasn’t really surprised about that, though I’m sure they would’ve broadcast it loud and clear had Richardson opted to endorse Clinton. What did surprise me a little was when I heard that some in the Clinton camp were exploiting Holy Week, comparing Richardson to Judas. Seriously? Richardson is Judas? Give me a break. Just because he is connected to the Clintons doesn’t mean he can’t be his own man. And, as one blogger points out, by that analogy Hillary Clinton would be Jesus. I think I’ll leave it at that.

Then there was the passport thing. Apparently, over the course of last year, and even the beginning of this year, State department officials peeked at the confidential passports files of all three presidential candidates. Looks like the State department’s right hand doesn’t know what its left hand is doing. But hey, what else is new?

And of course, last Wednesday was the 5th “anniversary” of the invasion of Iraq. Five years, 4000 US lives–who knows how many Iraqi lives, because “we don’t do body counts”– $3 trillion and what do we have to show for it? Only more lives broken, ruined, and terminated while the war profiteers get rich. Shame on us. I’ll be speaking at a war protest on Wednesday. I’ll try and post my speech up later.

Speaking of war protests, many people celebrated Easter yesterday. I wish more people would have celebrated like this, rather than spending outrageous amounts of money on new clothes and expensive meals. What better way to commemorate resurrection than to affirm life and condemn its termination? [Ht. Corey Hau]

And finally, for the not-so-important stuff that happened around my house. As you can see, I completely overhauled my blog (more about that later), which needed to be done pretty bad. I was sick for most of the week (nothing like being sick on your spring break), so I sat around and puzzled over CSS. My wife, Bonnie, now has her own site and has started blogging. You should hop over and check it out. And, another really big thing happened over the last week, but I’ll wait and dedicate a whole post to that later.

Whew. I think that’s it.

“It is terribly important to realize that the leap of faith is not so much a leap of thoughts as of action. For while in many matters it is first we must see, then we will act; in matters of faith it is first we must do then we will know, first we will be and then we will see. One must, in short, dare to act wholeheartedly without absolute certainty.”

~bh ><>

I’ve been pretty swamped this week and haven’t had time to write anything with quality content. So, here’s another parable I wrote for my class:

“The network of God is like a latent computer virus that infects a mainframe and spreads throughout the entire system, slowly hijacking every machine from the inside out.”

~bh ><>