(Ir)religiosity

If God in Christ dies for real on the cross then what is the meaning of the resurrection?

My contention would be that Good Friday is not superseded by Easter Sunday, that the resurrection does not supplant the crucifixion.

The problem, I think, is that we are too quick to separate Pentecost from the Resurrection.  Pentecost marks the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the faith collective, the arrival of a new signifier which, after Christ’s death on the cross, is immanent to the collective itself.

The collective, then, is one that is deprived of its support from the Big other, as Zizek would put it.  Christ is raised in the community of believers through the liberative power of the Holy Spirit.  The entrance of the Spirit as the life of the collective spells the end of God as transcendental signified and the beginning of God as emancipatory event.

The resurrection of Christ does not involve a mere return or reduplication of his prior presence.  Rather, it involves the repetition of that presence with critical difference (i.e., the Spirit).  The logic of resurrection is in fact the logic of repetition.  The absence of God qua Big other, of God qua transcendental signified is overcome (that is, repeated, resurrected) with the presence of the Spirit, with the entrance of a new liberative signifier immanent and intrinsic to the community.

Under this sign, with the power of the Spirit, and the galvanizing memory of God’s crucified body, the community of believers perpetually enacts a non-identical repetition of Christ’s gesture under the conviction that Empire can never repress such a memory absolutely.  Indeed, there will always remain a liberative surplus, an emancipatory kernel, which opens up the space for crucial theo-political praxis and social antagonism.  It is here, in this tear in the ontological fabric of Empire, where God’s event pierces and violates its supposed immanence, that Christ is indeed resurrected.  And it is incumbent on the community, on its participation and repetition.

Shortly before he was martyred, Archbishop Oscar Romero wrote, “If I am killed I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people.”  Similarly, in an important scene of V for Vendetta, V states that “ideas are bulletproof.”  When Easter is celebrated in anticipation of Pentecost one can properly claim that the most important and liberative idea of all is in fact crucifixion-proof.  While God as transcendental signified may have died on the cross, the idea of God’s kin-dom surely did not.  The instruments of torture and state-sponsored terrorism cannot hold it because Empire can never maintain absolute hegemonic control.  Even as God is dead, even as God is eclipsed, Christ is risen, made present in the community through the power of the Spirit.  And it is through this dangerous, galvanizing memory that the church enacts critical repetition, in (e)sc(h)atological anticipation of the consummation of the (in/re)surrection.

Regardless of your position on abortion and your opinion of Notre Dame’s controversial decision to allow President Obama to speak at their commencement, you have to admit that his speech was compelling.  I absolutely love this quotation:

“[R]emember too that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.

This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame. And within our vast democracy, this doubt should remind us to persuade through reason, through an appeal whenever we can to universal rather than parochial principles, and most of all through an abiding example of good works, charity, kindness, and service that moves hearts and minds.” (ht)

This sort of epistemological humility is something I admire and a quality that is becoming for a President (especially given the last eight years).  Not only that, it is a quality that is inherent in Christianity regardless of the trajectory of Church history over the last 200 hundred years.  Faith, by its very nature, welcomes this sort of tension between belief and doubt and resides in a position beyond certainty and absolutes — a position that trusts in the absurdity and welcomes the impossible when it ruptures the predictable, mundane monotony of mere possibility.

Ok, I can’t help it:  Obama sounds very postmodern in that quotation, I daresay very emergent.  I know, that’s probably not a fair assessment but the sentiment is strikingly similar.  It jettisons the smug certainty endemic on both poles (call them whatever you want) and opts not for a via media — no that would be to play by the rules dictated by modernity, allowing the them to limit and colonize the imagination — but a supra media that transcends the old boring binaries and bifurcations, completely rethinking our conceptual framework altogether and continually pushing the creative envelope.  That is exciting to me.  And whether or not our current system allows him to completely succeed, I’m glad that Obama understands that and is willing to put it out there.

Although it doesn’t directly flow with everything else (or does it?) I can’t help but draw attention to a final quotation:

For if there is one law that we can be most certain of, it is the law that binds people of all faiths and no faith together. It is no coincidence that it exists in Christianity and Judaism; in Islam and Hinduism; in Buddhism and humanism. It is, of course, the Golden Rule – the call to treat one another as we wish to be treated. The call to love. To serve. To do what we can to make a difference in the lives of those with whom we share the same brief moment on this Earth. (ht)

If there is anything that I can claim to be certain of it is that I have a divine mandate to love, to do justice, to hope, and to participate in a reality that is not merely my own, a reality that binds us all together as human beings and bearers of the divine image.  Beyond that, I live with inherent doubts.  I embrace them and find them beautiful because they remind me of my finitude and that I am part of something larger than myself.

Recently I had to write a short “spiritual autobiography” for one of my seminary classes that described a significant event in my faith journey thus far.  Below is what I wrote, a brief snapshot of my narrative.

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During high school and my early college years I spent a few weeks of the summer leading worship for United Methodist district camp.  Music and guitar playing are two of my deepest passions.  I grew in the church and have always looked back on my experience at camp fondly so I could think of no better way to spend my time and to use my talents than to help kids in their own faith journeys.

I have many great memories of those years, but one, the most recent in fact, remains especially salient.  And really, it doesn’t have a whole lot to do with camp at all, only what transpired in the days following.

One of the young girls that week (I’ll call her Jenny) she couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15 years old at the time, came forward during one of the worship services toward the latter part of the week to give her ‘testimony.’

Fighting back the tears, she spoke of how she was born in a prison to a substance-abusive mother and a physically-abusive father.  As a toddler and a young child she was passed between foster parents and her biological parents like a piece of property. She was traumatized and abused both emotionally and physically.  She was told that she was worthless and would amount to nothing.

Eventually, she was adopted into a loving, Christian family.  She finally had a good father figure, a man who was, in her words “the daddy she had always needed.”  She was introduced into a community of reconciliation and healing.  She became a disciple of Jesus Christ.  In fact, she and her best friend were to be baptized on the same day.  Her life was changed.  And then, just like that, her life was turned upside down. Read the rest of this entry »