From this morning's sermon,
It has often been noted that the armour described [in Ephesians 6] is not meant for offensive attack. There is no spear, bow, or long sword. The equipment described assumes close and intimate contact. It is interesting that the only piece of equipment used for any sort of offence is the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. We often make truth or righteousness or even salvation as the sword we wield. We try to outdo our opponents in disputes over truth. We claim victory in our acts of righteousness. Or we divide people over our claims about salvation. Instead of offensive weapons Paul describes these things as gifted to us, that we take up and dress ourselves in. This sword of the Spirit is also mentioned in the book of Hebrews where it says, “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
And so even this one offensive object is something we ourselves can never master or control but is something that we allow to work on ourselves as much as others. When we allow the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, free movement it shifts from being the crusaders sword to the surgeon’s scalpel and the priest’s sacrificial knife able to make cuts and incisions that work for healing and wholeness.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
The Only Offensive
Monday, July 28, 2008
When they ask about the stones . . .
Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. . . . Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been [a] in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day. - Joshua 4:5-7, 9
Then Joshua, together with all Israel, took Achan son of Zerah, the silver, the robe, the gold wedge, his sons and daughters, his cattle, donkeys and sheep, his tent and all that he had, to the Valley of Achor. Joshua said, "Why have you brought this trouble on us? The LORD will bring trouble on you today." Then all Israel stoned him, and after they had stoned the rest, they burned them. Over Achan they heaped up a large pile of rocks, which remains to this day. - Joshua 7:24-26a
They were picked up from the river bed, exposed for the first time to sun and air. The stones of the river bed settled and secure in water remained always dry. What is God comes from the deep.
When your children ask tell them, "You are God's because you have come from the deep." As the stone is dry our life is from the deep but the deep does not penetrate entering our sanctuary though God is our sanctuary and perhaps God is the deep. Tell them also if you want to look for God then look to the deep. Holiness is deep and perhaps the deep is holy.
They picked stones in the valley and hurled them at Achan, his wife, sons and daughters. The stones met with the soft resistance of flesh bloodied with life but dry inside, always dry, purely dry. Gather the stones and when your children ask about them, tell them, "God possess all and God takes what is not gift. God takes all those that take as God takes. We have not God's eyes though we extend our reach as though we can possess. What God has given can be received. It can be received because God has given. What you take, God takes back, always even if it takes longer than Achan. You will feel the stones of greed, hatred or age and these stones will shake loose all that your hands grasp. And things will return to God as they already were."
Tell them that . . . when they ask.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Little Terror
Zizek quoting Maximlien Robespierre on terror,
If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, amid revolution it is at the same time virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is fatal; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue. It is less a special principle that a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most pressing needs.
I will set aside any qualitative judgments on that passage and consider whether the stick-up boy Omar Little from The Wire comes close to functioning in that role. A stick-up boy is someone who robs the drug dealers. Omar repeatedly talks about living by a code and when a drug dealer tries to pin a murder charge on him in revenge Omar has some credibility when he tells the police officers, "Did you ever know me to do a civilian?" More than this Omar operates with prompt, severe and inflexible actions. Another aspect of the revolutionary space that Zizek promotes is its radical egalitarianism. Omar runs with a tight group in which he himself is gay and includes his lover, women, and his blind "mentor" Butch.
I suspect Omar's mettle comes from a mixture of suffering (indicated by the giant scare across his face) as well as having a moral/spiritual framework from youth (in one scene he is attacked brining his mother to church). I have as yet to understand the 'human' role that would allow a revolutionary event that I understand Badiou or Zizek to advocate to be anything less than the terror that has occurred in the past.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Not Violent Enough
Zizek takes an entire chapter in In Defense of Lost Causes offering commentary on how we might understand Martin Heidegger's connection to Nazism. Zizek dismisses the characteristic justifications for this. 1) Heidegger was never really a Nazi, he just made superficial compromises in order to save what he could of the autonomy of the university. 2) Heidegger was, for a limited period, a sincerely committed Nazi; however, not only did he withdraw once he became aware of his blunder, but the acquaintance with Nazi power precisely enabled him to gain an insight into the nihilism of modern technology as the deployment of the unconditional will-to-power. 3) Heidegger was a Nazi, and there is nothing to reproach him with for this choice: in the early 1930s, it was a perfectly legitimate and understandable choice.
Zizek subtitles this chapter "Why Heidegger took the right step (albeit in the wrong direction) in 1933. He is interested in showing that Heidegger's association rather than being an anomaly or mistake was actually somehow deeply embedded in his overall thinking.
The association of course is not with the extermination of the Jews but with the possibility of revolution. What is sought through revolution is the creation of space, the suspension of temporality, and the emergence of something new. What becomes the criticism of the Nazism exertion of total power was not that it went too far but that it did not go far enough. What Heidegger hoped to address was the primal conflict in being that sustains the social order. This opens the way for Heidegger's discussion on violence. Zizek offers an extended quote,
Violence is usually seen in terms of the domain in which concurring compromise and mutual assistance set the standard for Dasein, and accordingly all violence is necessarily deemed only a disturbance and an offense. . . . The violent one, the creative on who sets forth into the unsaid, who breaks into the unthought, who compels what has never happened and makes appear what is unseen - this violent one stands at all times in daring. . . . Therefore the violence-doer knows no kindness and conciliation (in the ordinary sense), no appeasement and mollification by success or prestige and by their confirmation. . . . For such a one, disaster is the deepest and broadest Yes to the Overwhelming. . . . Essential de-cision, when it is carried out and when it resists the constantly pressing ensnarement in the everyday and customary, has to use violence. This act of violence, this decided setting out upon the way to the Being of beings, moves humanity out of the hominess of what is most directly nearby and what is usual.
It is this sort of thinking that has liberal critics condemning Heidegger as allowing space for such expressions as Nazism in his thinking. Zizek claims that to level this critique is to confuse the two violences. He writes in his typical style,
What one is tempted to add here is that, in the case of Nazism (and fascism in general), [is that] the constellation of violence is rather the opposite: crazy, tasteless even, as it may sound, the problem with Hitler was that he was not violent enough, that his violence was not 'essential' enough. Nazism was not radical enough, it did not dare to disturb the basic structure of the modern capitalist social space (which is why it had to focus on destroying an invented external enemy, Jews).
The courage that Heidegger sought that he did not find in Nazism was the courage to attack, with violence, the ontological order of being that sustained the social order. For this violence to be in some way transformative then it must someone be able to be turned also on one's self.
I am not entirely sure how I feel about this chapter but what it did raise for me was the question of violence in the Old Testament, particularly the 'Conquest Narratives'. What appears to be necessary for Heidegger and Zizek is the presence of totality in revolutionary movements, complete abandonment and commitment. There is this sort of absoluteness in the God's violent edicts of the Israelites entering the land. Reality consists of symbolic actions under the sovereignty of God. The actions of the Israelites needed to reflect complete trust in God. The sin of the people was not the violence but the half-measures of violence. The violence that still in some way served the people themselves. I am running out of steam and time here but the further question would then of course be how this relates to the question of violence and Jesus. Is there any sense in which Jesus acted as 'violent one' in order to open up the space of transformation?
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Getting Up on My Soap-Box
Hineini asks the question in Attack on Sanctuary,
Do you feel you are entitled as a pastor to ask your congregants to give up their safety? I'm not sure this is a fair question really but I'm curious on your take. I like the idea of sanctuary and abhore the idea of violence but, for me, part of the idea of sanctuary is that God will provide protection and I'm not seeing much of that anytime lately so I'm wondering if its time to rethink things....
This is definitely a two-part question. First is the role preaching or perhaps even education or transformation more generally. This Advent season represents the close of my first full year of preaching. Most of my sermons up until about a month ago were centered around particular images that I thought would be evoking and generative for people's lives. Very little came off as prescriptive. I did not offer a very specific 'application' for my sermons. In my mind I probably still favour this approach. However, my temperament is to be a little avoident and so I suspect this type of preaching flows from here.
Something happened in reflecting on the texts for my first sermon in Advent. Paul says to the church in Rome that it is time for them to 'wake from their slumber.' This passage roused my own thinking and challenged me in what a church responding to the Gospel should look like. I saw this call as re-focusing on the simple but encompassing love for our neighbour. The OT text was Isaiah 2 and I preached on the surrounding passages that spoke of leveling of all those lifted themselves up on high hills, which I interpreted as isolating yourself from your neighbour. I spoke these words,
Being awake means being aware of your neighbour. St. Antony the monk once wrote, “Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we win our neighbour, we win God. If cause our neighbour to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.” This is similar to Isaiah’s criticism.
Now then, listen, you lover of pleasure,
lounging in your security
and saying to yourself,
'I am, and there is none besides me.'
We need to know our neighbour so that we can know Christ. If we do not listen to our neighbour we will doze off to sleep again.
And in conclusion,
Christ came to establish the mountain of God above all other hills and so our calling is to come down from our individual high hills and journey to the mountain of God where justice and wisdom flow. This Christmas season we will not see Christ if we remain on our high hills. We must come down and gather together first in the valley as it will lead to the mountain of God. And then gathered together there we can make way for the saviour who has come, who is present among us and who will come again. We make way for Christ in our minds and in our actions. We make way for Christ as he comes in our neighbours. This Christmas season we are called to make a place Christ in our homes and in our lives. Keep watch and stay alert in this age because Paul tells us that our salvation is nearer now then when we first believed. The night is nearly over. The day is almost here. Stay awake. Keep watch in faith and journey with your neighbour in the valley and in the storm as we travel with Christ to the mountain of God.
Amen.
This is strong language for my style of preaching and it continued into my sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Advent (Isaiah 35; Luke 1:47-55; Matthew 11:2-11), which moves into the second part of the question, Do you feel you are entitled as a pastor to ask your congregants to give up their safety?
I was moved by the presence and use of lethal force by armed guards at New Life Church in Colorado and decided that would be my base image for my last sermon. In that sermon I focused on the context, more so that the specific content, of the texts for that Sunday. For both Isaiah's ministry and first-century Palestine the question of deliverance and freedom were open. I admitted in the sermon that other passages could be used to respond to the question of violence but that "our passages here are clear and unequivocal in their rejection of the world’s use of force." Isaiah condemns those who look to Egypt for help and points to Hezekiah's faithful act of trust that delivers Jerusalem (for the time being). Jesus overturns the popular notion of Messiah as people anticipated and rallied around heroic characters who rose and fell at that time.
And I concluded the sermon with the following statements,
Seeing and receiving Christ means being outside of the world’s power and following Christ mean walking daily in the rejection and overturning of those powers. This is why the image of armed guards at church remains so unnerving. It is perhaps possible to agree that the use of force can restrain certain events from happening. We can be thankful that the incident in Colorado did get any worse that it did. But we need to remember that this incident is not unlike another incident in the U.S. On September 11 2001 a group of extremists attacked what citizens saw as the sanctuary of their homeland. It was believed that quick and decisive action would bring about peace and justice to the situation. The world’s force only offers the possibility of restraint. Contrary to Churchill’s statement there is no promise of peace when rough men stand ready to do violence. The U.S. is not a place of peace because they have largest and most powerful military. And here in Canada we must beware of the extant to which we profit from the military strength at home and in the U.S. In these realms there is no vision of desert flowers bursting into bloom. We must individually and communally navigate and respond to conflict and brokenness around us asking ourselves if we will attempt to restrain force with force or if we will, in faith, open up a way in the desert.
In our aid the Gospel gives at least one response to a violent attack on the church. That is a response to an attack on the body of Christ, which is the church. In the Garden of Gethsemane towards the end of his ministry Jesus and his followers are approached by a mob wielding clubs and swords coming to arrest Jesus. In defence one of those with Jesus strikes out with his sword and cuts the ear of the servant of the high priest but before the violence escalates Jesus intervenes and speaks to the reality of God’s world saying, “Put your sword back in its place. For all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?” God and God’s Kingdom is not threatened with the world’s force. The mountain of God rises up on a different foundation. That foundation comes to us weak and vulnerable as a child. This is our story in the Christmas season. This is must be our story the year as it carries us towards Easter. This must become the story of our life because this is the only place where God promises peace. And from that place a way opens up where justice comes from unlikely places like flowers in the desert bursting into bloom.
Amen.
What I emphasized was that there is no promise of peace or justice through the means of the world's power and force. I hoped that here I would walk a line between overt prescription and vague moralism. Did I ask my congregation to give up their safety? Not really, I suppose. What I said was that there is no promise of safety (peace) through the medium of force. A community of non-violence must be voluntary community. This falls off the radar quickly in churches without an historic peace stance. It did for me in my time away from the Mennonite church. It is becoming more and more pressing as I allow it to intentionally emerge from the Gospel.
I see this question also opening into the larger arena of education and transformation. What challenges me is preaching such a sermon and then living with and among my congregation and wondering if and how change is possible through such mediums. I am sure this is the perennial challenge of professors and teachers as well.
Any thoughts, comments, reflections on the roles of preaching, transformation or peace and violence?
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Attack on Sanctuary
There is an ironic biblical parallel to the Colorado church shooting, which could be viewed as an attack on 'the body of Christ'. The arrest of Jesus (the sanctuary, and body, of all believers) was a violent attack in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matt. 26:50-54). It says that men came with swords and clubs and seized Jesus. Then one who was with Jesus drew his sword struck one of the men and cut off his ear. Jesus responded to the man by saying, "Put your sword back in its place. For all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?" Luke's account also has Jesus heal the ear of the man struck.
Whether you decide to accept it or not the Gospel offers an alternative understanding of our bodies. They are not the sites of fortified preservation. They are the open sites of sacrificial offering. If the church cannot function with some level of vulnerability it can offer no new message to the play of powers around us.
. . .
One other interesting aspect of this event has emerged in my mind. Senior pastor Brady Boyd (hired only in August of this summer) made the comment "That's the reality of our world. I don't think any of us grew up in churches where that was a reality, but today it is.". This struck me as odd for some reason and I decided to do a little snooping. I found out that Boyd grew up in a small town in Louisiana that is a about a 2 hour drive from Jena (site of the recent racial tension and violence). It is hard for me to believe that Boyd had no cultural memory of the numerous attacks on black churches (that I found out still has an unfortunately high occurrence) in his part of the country. The issue for Boyd remained the fortification of his fold instead opening himself to connecting with the insight and pain of his black brothers and sisters in the American south. There is a looming ambivalence towards one's neighbour that lurks in this story.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Sanctuary - Part II
There must, must be sustained commentary around the recent church shooting in Colorado. There is so much that is deeply disturbing about this issue. First and foremost in my mind is the presence of an armed security guard who killed the gunman. In one AP article this person "is hailed for saving countless lives in shooting a gunman outside her church". Her acts as saviour are recounted in several articles. This event has also fed into America's Homeland Defense Machine explored in another AP article. Here are a few excerpts.
Churches want to present an open and welcoming image, but in an era of mass-casualty shootings and terrorism threats, the violence at New Life highlights a new emphasis on security. Some of the nation's estimated 1,200 megachurches — places where more than 2,000 worshippers gather each week — have been quietly beefing up security in recent years, even using armed guards to protect the faithful.
Meanwhile, many more, often smaller congregations typically don't have detailed security plans because they don't have the money or don't want to risk turning people away.
At Potter's House, a Dallas megachurch led by star pastor T.D. Jakes, a private security company employs a team of armed, unarmed, uniformed and plainclothes guards that keep watch over crowds in the thousands. Under a new Texas law, all nonprofits must use licensed security guards, and the church hired Classic Security in response, said Sean Smith, who formerly led the church's security detail and now works for the company.
For the past three years, Potter's House has hosted a church security conference, drawing more than 400 people this year to sessions on surveillance, background checks and other issues. Although precautions can be costly, money spent on security can end up being far less than liability and lawsuit risks if no action is taken, the church says.
"You see (security) anywhere but churches," Smith said. "You see it in malls, at banks, at concerts. Somehow, at churches we feel immune to violence. But it's been proven not to be the case."
Even without a security department, churches can train volunteers to keep watch for suspicious behavior, such as a visitor dressed in a long coat in summer or not making eye contact with anyone, Smith said.
The security plan at New Life Church may seem extraordinary. The church's volunteer security force is stocked with people with military or law enforcement experience, they carry radios and weapons, and there are evacuation plan calls for hustling worshippers into "secure zones" in the case of emergencies.
I am not sure what is worse armed guards at churches or churches not having them because they don't want to turn people off. Are those the only two views? That churches are one of the only places where you don't see guards is a great opportunity to explore its unique social space but is here restricted to the idea that we are simply being naive. Where once we could perhaps look on "suspicious behaviour" as the context for witnessing to the grace offered in our faith it is now the criteria for confinement and judgment prior even to crime. And perhaps theologically most profound is the concept of moving people out of the sanctuary into "secure zones". That the space of communing with the One to whom is the "kingdom, the power and the glory" is less secure than that created by the boundaries of humans is cause for needed reflection.
Now this of course was no ordinary church under attack. This was the church founded by Ted Haggard. Hear some of the responses by church members and leaders.
"Even back then (when Haggard was pastor) we had people undercover in the congregation who were armed," Dodd said. "It was a big church at the time, it was Christian, and some people really hate that stuff.
"Not only do we have military and ex-military all over, we have this sort of frontier mentality. People around here are serious about protecting their own."
. . .
Assam, the security guard, had attended the church's early worship service at 9 a.m., then stood watch in the rotunda of as the second service was letting out.
There, she confronted the gunman, identified as 24-year-old Matthew Murray. Murray managed to two kill two sisters and wound their father and two others before he was killed. At a news conference Monday, Assam said that she prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide her, and that her hands never shook.
"It seemed like it was me, the gunman and God," Assam said.
Speaking of the church's security plan, Boyd said: "That's the reality of our world." He stressed that all armed guards are licensed and screened.
And with respect to the larger political response.
The Homeland Security Department created a grant program of nearly $50 million to improve security for religious and secular nonprofits considered at risk of terrorist attack.
Several groups have received individual grants, according to Homeland Security officials.
The Fellowship of the Woodlands megachurch in Texas employs a former FBI agent as a full-time security director, overseeing volunteers and paid staff, said pastor Kerry Shook. Those who are armed in the congregation are police officers, he said.
"It's something you just have to do today," said Shook, whose congregation draws 15,600 people per weekend. "We want everyone to feel safe. At the same time, we want to be open and accepting of everyone. An incident like this one in Colorado Springs just reinforces what the church is — we have to be a light in a dark world."
It is difficult to understand how you are being a light when you are simply producing the same reality as the culture around you unless of course you believe that your culture is the light of the world. And I do suppose this is the thinking here.
