Category Archives: peace

On Welcoming Jesus

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Advent is a time when we anticipate God’s coming into our lives in mysterious ways. But are we really looking forward to God coming to us, or are we expecting business as usual, even if business isn’t all that good? Do we believe that God can affect our lives, or do we live on the assumption that such does not happen?

During a time of crisis, King Ahaz is urged to ask a sign of God but refuses to do so. (Is. 7: 1-12) Why? Asking God for a sign would alert him to the possibility that God might enter his life in some way. Business is bad, with the Assyrians threatening Jerusalem, but maybe he would rather be trampled by a powerful army then open himself up to what God might do. In the face of the king’s closing himself off, the prophet Isaiah announces a sign whether the king likes it or not. The sign doesn’t seem like much up against an invading army. How is a new born child going to solve the problem? Well, it isn’t exactly the baby who solves the problem; it’s God who solves the problem with a nudge that sends the invading army away. The baby was a sign of hope for the future, as babies often are. Nothing happens here that conflicts with the laws of nature. After all, God can accomplish much with the laws of nature. (The old translation that had a “virgin” conceiving in Isaiah’s time is considered by almost all scholars to be a mistranslation.) Now God’s little but decisive nudge wasn’t so bad was it? The only problem was that the king wasn’t in control of the situation. Not letting God control his situation would lead to Assyria controlling the situation. Is it easier to cope with being controlled by other humans that in some mysterious way being controlled, or at least led, by God? That is a particularly good question for us to ask ourselves during Advent.

Fast forward to Joseph confronted with a betrothed woman who has become pregnant, but not by him. Knowing the laws of nature as well as any modern gynecologist, Joseph decides to divorce Mary discretely, but before he can carry out his resolve, he is challenged by a dream to believe that God has intervened directly in violation to normal natural law. One could say it is once again just a little nudge. Once the conception of the child has taken place, the child develops in Mary’s womb like any other child and, when born, is just as fully human as any other child. But this little wedge, or nudge, is a big one, even a cosmic one. It is a nudge that has fundamentally changed the world for all time. And yet this little nudge, in spite of being contrary to natural law, did not send an army away. The Roman army stuck around and did its work, including the crucifixion of criminals, one of whom turned out to be the child conceived by the Holy Spirit. On the surface it doesn’t look like much of an intervention.

At this point we might ask ourselves: Do we need a decisive intervention from God such as Matthew claims to have happened with the conception of Jesus in the womb of Mary? Maybe business as usual has been bad, but at least we’re used to it. St. Paul, however, insisted that humanity had become a train wreck and needed the direct presence of God within humanity before anything could get better. St. Augustine and subsequent theologians have seconded the motion. The modern thinker René Girard has offered us anthropological insights to suggest that we are too entangled in rivalrous relationships for any of them to be disentangled unless there is intervention from outside the system, which to say: from God. So, business is bad, as I said, but do we prefer the bad business as usual to the unknown possibilities that might emerge if we embrace the child born of the Virgin Mary? Christmas is coming. Do we really want Christ to come?

On Being Migrant Citizens

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Migration is one of the major themes in the Bible. Abraham was called out of Ur of the Chaldees and Isaac and Jacob were constantly on the move. In Deuteronomy, Moses gives a retrospective account of their migration from Egypt to the Promised Land of Canaan that they are about to enter. In contradistinction to the Egyptians, Moses insists that the God who lead them out of Egypt demands good treatment to helpless people, especially the widow and the orphan, and the stranger, since they were strangers in Egypt. (Deut. 10: 19) Later, there we are migrations of the Jewish people at the hands of power politics that lead to the Babylonian Exile and the Return from Exile under the rule of Cyrus. With the prophets’ conviction that God was at the root of these movements, there is the suggestion that God, rather than any particular piece of land, is their true home. The author of Hebrews reviews all of the biblical migrations to teach us that, no matter how much we may think we feel “at home” in this world, this world is not our true homeland but that God has prepared a better homeland, “a heavenly one.” (Heb. 11: 16) Hardly surprising since the Son of Man had no place to lay his head. (Mt. 8: 20) If everybody’s true Homeland is a heavenly one, then there is no land on earth where anyone should be considered a stranger and treated the way the Egyptians, the Assyrians or the Babylonians treated the Jews. (Or the ways the Jews treated the Canaanites when they entered the Promised Land.) From these considerations, it follows that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, as Jesus teaches us in Matthew. (Mt. 5: 44) After all, if we are all aliens, then nobody is an alien, and there is no reason for anybody to be an enemy.

On Independence Day in the U.S., one may be prompted to use these reflections for guidance as to how our nation should conduct itself. That is, we should be welcoming to people seeking entry into our country, nurture the vulnerable, and do what we can to cultivate good relations with other countries. Bad governance by these guidelines would be to pursue a policy of enmity, either against people within the country or with other countries, or both. Usually the two go together, as the more enemies one finds, the more enemies one finds. Such governance is a disquieting escalation that will have no end until, like the serpent Ouroboros, we devour our own tail. After all, hatred of others tends to be rooted in hatred of self. Ouroboros is considered a symbol of infinity, but it is the infinity of the closed circle, and thus a vicious cycle. Such closed circles represent the policies of most sovereignties since the foundation of the world, with Egypt, Assyria,. Babylon, and Rome being biblical examples. It is the infinity of God, the maker of Heaven and Earth, who specifically commands the Israelites to open their circle, and with Jesus, this true infinity becomes a human being who breaks the circle we keep trying to close again. So it is that closed-circle rulers such as in Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome, and the Jewish leaders of Jerusalem crucify Jesus, only to have the Risen Victim open to us the way to an open system for all time, if and when we will have it.

With a political observance such as Independence Day, it is tempting to keep the focus on what the government should do, making ourselves armchair coaches with no responsibility–America’s favorite blood sport–but it is all the more important to realize that when political leaders show a need for enemies, they need for us to need enemies ourselves. When we put the matter this way, we begin to see how difficult these teachings are for ourselves. We ourselves tend to find excuses to consider some people to be aliens and others to be enemies. Life seems to lose its meaning without them. But if we have it in us to envision a country living by biblical principles, living as migrants wandering towards a heavenly homeland, then we need to open the closed system of enmity and open ourselves to the Holy Spirit who lovingly tears down these barriers. If we want a loving, peaceful country, we have to be peaceful, loving selves. That would be a cause for celebration.

The Prodigal Parable

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The Parable traditionally known as The Prodigal Son (Lk. 15: 11–32) is obviously a story of estrangement and reconciliation and forgiveness. So clear is this message, there should be no diluting or compromising it with violence, discord, or unforgiveness. However, the United States, a country filled with active churches, has the highest rate of incarceration in the world by a large margin. On top of that, we are seeing a spirit of vengeance in politics that seems to keep on growing. Does this parable’s meaning just disappear at the church door on the way out to the “real” world? A lawyer, Preston Shipp, author of Confessions of a Former-Prosecutor is an example of this disconnect. While raised in the church, he dreamed of being a prosecuting attorney from a fairly young age to protect society from the bad guys who victimized the good people. For many years, he fulfilled this dream by working at the state attorney’s office in Nashville. All this time, Jesus’ parable was in a totally alien universe, to judge by his own account. So, somehow, the simple and clear message of the parable is extraordinarily difficult to hear and believe in and act out in life. Why is this? Does the Parable itself give us insights into these difficulties? Let us take a look for ourselves with the help of Preston Shipp.

The elder brother’s relationship with his younger brother is not brotherly, although I suppose a cynic might say that’s what brotherhood is. Given the outrageous way the younger brother left home (demanding, not requesting his half of the inheritance) there are understandable reasons for this attitude. In any case, the elder brother’s calling his younger brother “that son of yours” in speaking with his father, suggests a highly depersonalized relationship with his brother. Preston Shipp writes about how he realized that the justice system is designed to prevent a prosecutor from having any personal awareness of the person he was prosecuting, let alone a relationship. This changed when a professor he had in college asked him to teach some law classes for college credit in a woman’s prison. This experience of bonding with incarcerated persons lead him to leave the prosecutor’s office. He now works for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. Clearly, the way we manage relationships has a lot to do with how forgiving, or not, we might be. The second time Preston taught a course, he was highly impressed by a woman named Cyntoia Brown. She was underage when convicted of murder, but was sentenced as an adult. As he learned of her exposure to sex trafficking from an early age and other factors, he saw a person in a way that a prosecuting attorney is not encouraged to see a defendant. Imagine his shock when he received a copy of a court document he had filed while still working as a prosecutor, showing that he himself had rejected her appeal of a 51-year sentence and had never recollected it after meeting her in class.

Although the elder son is dutiful in the sense of staying home and working on his father’s farm, the way he berates his father for receiving his younger brother suggests he has little love for the work or for his father. Serious dissatisfaction with one’s work and family situation can harden the heart and make one less inclined to forgive. However, when the father tells the elder brother that everything he has, his elder son also has, we gain the suspicion that perhaps the elder brother was surrounded with blessings, like fattened calves, that he did not see or appreciate. Such lack of appreciation also dampens a sense of forgiveness of other people. The elder brother may have stayed with his father geographically, but his mind and heart seem to have been miles away.

The trauma of abuse or violent crime can make it difficult for the victim to forgive. Preston Shipp encountered many such crimes and knows what they cost the victims, although he also realized that the justice system did nothing to assist such victims except to feed any vengeance they might have. There is nothing in the parable to suggest that the elder brother had suffered any such trauma. The father, on the other hand, was surely traumatized by his younger son’s departure, and yet he welcomed him back with open arms. Cyntoia Brown was traumatized when she saw that her appeal had been denied and that Preston Shipp had been the one who reviewed it and rejected it. Preston expected to be skewered by her when he came to the next class, but he found her deeply forgiving, in spite of her hurt. This particular story has a happy ending in that, with the help of some celebrities taking up her cause which brought her into the public eye, Cyntoia was finally released from prison and has become an activist for many social causes, hoping to prevent what happened to her from happening to other people.

Shipp explains in many ways how vengeance is systemic in our judicial system and throughout our country’s cultural system. This system of vengeance is greatly exacerbated by systemic racism that has characterized American culture since colonial times and continues unabated to the present day. Racism, of course, entails much depersonalization of the other. More important, participation in such as system skews our perception of reality where many things taken for granted shouldn’t be. Will we ever bottom out of this collective sin the way the younger brother bottomed out of his sensual sins? On the other hand, this parable depicts a party being celebrated by an entire household, except for the elder brother. We can take this party as an image of a society transformed by forgiveness and reconciliation, an eschatological vision, we might say. Surely this party is an image of God, in Christ, “reconciling the world to himself.” (1 Cor. 19) Does this image attract us in any way, enough for us to desire to enter into it? Or are we more attracted to a society governed by the elder brother as he berates his father for such a celebration?

.When the father says to his elder son that the younger son had been dead and has come to life, (Lk. 15: 32) the story shifts to the Paschal Mystery. Such radical forgiveness makes one vulnerable, as the father was vulnerable. Who would want to be treated as the younger son treated his father? Who would want to be treated the way the older son treated his father? It is sobering to recall that the person who told this beautiful and edifying story was crucified as a criminal. Can we trust that this victim is risen and is still inviting us to the party?

Embracing the Fox

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When Jesus calls Herod “that fox,” (Lk. 13: 32) many associations, especially those from childhood, come to mind. In my case, there are the Uncle Remus stories of Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox and, of course, Aesop’s Fables. The animal stories by Thornton W. Burgess were among the first story books I heard as a small child, and they were the among first books I read for myself. Would Jesus have heard any such stories as a child? In the case of Aesop, it’s possible. It seems that children everywhere grow up with animal stories with foxes often being prominent.

The quality of being a cunning predator, often transformed as a trickster of sorts, is basic to many of the anthropological portrayals of foxes in the legends. In one of Aesop’s Fables, a fox tells a cock how much it wants to hear the bird sing. Indulging in pride over his voice, he is vulnerable to being carried off for the fox’s next meal. The townspeople, however, chase the fox because the cock belongs to them. So the cock suggests that the fox tell the people the cock belongs to it. Of course, when the fox opens its mouth to say that, the cock escapes. So the fox is outfoxed. Br’er Rabbit is always finding ways to outwit Br’er Fox, most famously by getting Br’er Fox to throw him into the brier patch where he can disentangle himself from the tar baby. In the Burgess books, Reddy the Fox goes from one flamboyant trick to the next. When I was an adolescent and Igor Stravinsky became a favorite composer, I listened to the short dramatic work Renard. Renard, another trickster fox, spanned several European traditions including the Russian version Stravinsky used. One of Renard’s tricks is to dress up as a nun and offer to hear the cock’s confession and give absolution. There seems to be some ecclesiastical confusion here, not least the ongoing problem of a predator posing in clerical garb. The cock makes himself vulnerable by being—well, cocky, and the cock needs to be rescued by the Cat and the Goat. It is not simply a case that a fox, like a rooster, has to eat. Reddy the Fox literally bites off more than he can chew by running off with the farmer’s plump hen, not for his supper, but for bragging rights.

Stories of trickster foxes and other animal tricksters are funny, They certainly tickle the funny bone of small children who feel overwhelmed by the power everybody else has over them. Since these stories reflect human behavior, they give us a chance to laugh at ourselves, if we are wise enough to see when the shoe fits. In the case of the Burgess books, just about every animal gets a story for itself, so that sympathy shifts from one character to another. A child might root for Reddy the Fox when he runs off with a plump hen, but roots for Danny Meadow Mouse when he is chased by an owl.

In short, these stories reflect the rivalrous relationships humans carry on with each other in all their comic dimensions. Not surprisingly, vanity is constantly the downfall of one rival or the other. But there is a sobering side to the comedy if we reflect that it is based on rivalry between predator and prey (and some characters are both.) It is no accident that the same dynamics come up time and again. When human relationships become rivalrous, it becomes a perpetual motion machine that keeps on going, just as the stories keep on coming with Renard up to his old tricks and his rivals up to theirs to outwit him in turn. In calling Herod “that fox,” Jesus is indicating that Herod, certainly a predator if not necessarily a trickster, is perpetuating the same old rivalry game as Renard and all other foxes in the fables. When Jesus laments the destruction of Jerusalem, he is showing us that all Jerusalem is caught in the fox’s game.

But instead of acting like a cocky cock or attacking the fox as the Cat and Goat do, Jesus yearns to gather Jerusalem’s children “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” (Lk. 13: 34) But we are not willing. After all, we would have to give up our predator/prey games that seem to give life so much of its meaning. But Jesus has already thrown a monkey wrench into the fox’s game by his gesture. Jesus pushes the monkey wrench deeper into the heart of the cosmos when he opens wide his arms on the cross, like a hen gathering its young.

When Paul tells the Philippians to imitate him, (Phil. 3: 17) he himself is imitating Jesus as the Mother Hen who renounces the fox’s games and makes himself vulnerable. Another example Paul holds up for imitation is Abraham in his act of faith. (Rom. 4: 3–5) When he has no heir and no hope of an heir, it is hard to be consoled by the countless stars in the sky. When we are overwhelmed by predatory foxes, we yearn for the Lion of Judah, not a Mother Hen with wings extended. But Abraham “believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” (Gen 1 5: 6) Can we hold steadfast in such faith? There is much need for the embrace of love in the face of so much widespread predatory trickery today. Can we even go so far as to join Jesus’ embrace of all foxes that they, too, may live in the Kingdom?

See also: The Prophet between the Fox and the Hen

Dwelling in the Land of the Suffering Servant

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The passage from Isaiah known as the Song of the Suffering Servant (Is. 53: 4–12) takes us to a foreign country where we have difficulty finding our way and understanding the language. The itinerary is too long and complicated to attempt a thorough tour, but the overall ambience is one of crushing suffering. The Servant is “struck down,” “wounded,” and “afflicted.” But not just struck down and wounded and afflicted as, say, a person dying of cancer might be, but somebody “wounded for our transgressions.” Perhaps one could say that there are a few familiar sights that remind us of normal life. We know that people sometimes suffer for the wrong-doing of others, and perhaps we feel we have ourselves suffered on account of others, but we don’t normally encounter the suffering inflicted on a person in so concentrated a form. But what is particularly foreign and strange is that the afflicted one “did not open his mouth,” but rather was “like a lamb led to the slaughter.” (Is. 53: 7) Some people can be resigned and dignified when suffering, but it is difficult not to protest when one is so seriously wronged. And this isn’t just somebody being blamed for what somebody else did. This is somebody stricken for the transgressions of a whole people. And yet, “he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.” Such willingness to suffer for the wrongs of others without protest is more than most of us can comprehend. The whole notion that such a thing could happen so intensively is as easy to comprehend as a totally unintelligible language. But there is another strangeness as well. The speaker, one we could call our guide, expresses remorse for the suffering of this innocent person. Our guide admits to being guilty of the sort of transgression that resulted in the suffering. Moreover, the guide admits to guilt over allowing the suffering and thinking the suffering was justified, was God’s will. This guide now sees the suffering as “a perversion of justice.” (Is. 53: 8) Sometimes we feel guilt over small matters such as putting ourselves before others and not stepping up in times of need. But such a fundamental move of repentance is rare in so serious a matter. Again, the language is virtually unintelligible.

But just as a foreign land can take on some familiarity for a frequent visitor, so visiting the foreign land of this text can take on the beginnings of familiarity the more we visit it. If we follow the Church calendar, we have at least a yearly visit. And now, outside of the usual time, we have another visit to the text we normally come across on Good Friday. If we gain the beginnings of familiarity, we can begin to ask ourselves if we have, in our own ways, added to the sufferings of this innocent servant, and whether or not we should repent of the burdens we have laid on other people. Perhaps we can begin to learn the language of this land and take the language to heart.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is not the same land as that of the Suffering Servant. It is not as drawn out and intense in the suffering as in Isaiah, but the language is a close variant of that of the Suffering Servant. First, we have a normal high priest who offers sacrifices for sins on behalf of the people. (Heb. 5: 1) It looks like a routine job, though one requiring penance on the part of the priest who sins like all of the other people. (Heb. 5: 2–3) But then suddenly, we have a High Priest who does not make an offering of a lamb led to the slaughter, but makes an offering of himself. This Priest is the lamb led to the slaughter, as was the Suffering Servant. Like the Suffering Servant, this Priest did not protest, but he did make his self-offering with “loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death.” (Heb. 5: 7) Again, we see a radical self-giving that is hard to understand, but the more we visit this land and learn the dialect, the more our hearts move in this direction, leading us to trust the One who heard the cries of the Priest who offered himself.

In Mark’s Gospel, we find ourselves in a much more familiar world where it is much easier to understand the language and customs. Two followers of a charismatic religious leader ask their leader if they can be given the best places at the right and left hands of the leader. (Mk. 10: 35–37) Not surprisingly, the other followers are incensed at this initiative, presumably because these are the places they would rather have for themselves. This kind of jockeying for position is much more like normal life than like visiting a foreign land. The odd thing, though, is that the charismatic leader in question, Jesus, isn’t in their territory at all. Perhaps his body is there with them, but his mind is thoroughly ensconced in the Land of the Suffering Servant, a land where he speaks the language fluently. It is the world of his followers and of ourselves that is unintelligible to him. In fact, when Jesus does speak, he speaks in the language of the Suffering Servant, a foreign tongue to the disciples and to us. Fortunately, Jesus’ teaching is relatively simple, like using a primer for beginners. In this regard, this Gospel fits in well during ordinary time, when we are following Jesus and his disciples and learning for ourselves how to be disciples. Rather than talking about bearing the burdens of other peoples’ transgressions, Jesus simply tells us that the leader must be a servant of all. (Mk. 10: 43) This is the first baby step for learning the language of the Suffering Servant. One can go from there to the more advanced matters of the Suffering Servant’s world, which is Jesus’ world.

We are here presented with two worlds, two universes, even. Perhaps some of us have one foot in both worlds. Since the two worlds don’t mix very well, this would make us be what James, In his epistle, called “double minded.” (James 1: 8) The world of the Suffering Servant, is, however, what Paul called the “mind of Christ.” (1 Cor. 2: 16) The question is whether we will occasionally visit the world of the Suffering Servant as uncomprehending tourists, or make frequent visits and become fluent in the language where the words penetrate the heart. If we become attentive to serving others, there isn’t time to ask for the best places because we are entering the only place that matters.

A Cup of Cold Water

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Jesus’ words about cutting off hands and feet and plucking out eyes in order to avoid unquenchable fire are pretty grim and can leave us feeling traumatized. (Mk. 9: 43–48) It is enough to make a preacher look for ways to make everybody feel better. For starters, I think I can safely say that this business of cutting off hands and feet and plucking out eyes is hyperbole and Jesus doesn’t expect or want us to do any such things. Even so, even if we take these words metaphorically, they are clearly metaphorical about giving up something that feels like a part of us, so we aren’t in for a free ride by any means.

Why the talk about stumbling blocks that lead to sin and the drastic solution of dismemberment? The French thinker René Girard is helpful for understanding what a stumbling-block is all about. The Greek word is skandalon. It refers to offense, scandalizing other people by our conduct or our words. In the preceding verses read as last Sunday’s Gospel, the disciples had argued about who was the greatest. Jesus then put a child among them and told them to become like this little child. (Mk. 9: 33–37) At the beginning of today’s reading, the disciples are complaining about somebody casting out demons in Jesus’ name, another example of arguing about who is the greatest, as they see this exorcist as a competitor while Jesus sees him as somebody else doing what needs to be done. (Mk. 9: 38–40) Girard suggested that when people become rivals, they become stumbling blocks to one another. They become entangled with one another, tripping and falling over each other. Children, such as the child Jesus placed among the contentious disciples, are very vulnerable to such a competitive environment in many ways. If they feel they have to compete to get attention in order to have their needs met, they copy the behavior that is modeled to them. More tragically, children are often “collateral damage” in the conflicts waged by their elders, whether it is in the family or large-scale warfare. A society permeated by people arguing and fighting about who is the greatest is hellish. It is a fire that never goes out. So we don’t have to think in terms of an afterlife, but it is worth mentioning that there can be no such rivalry in heaven so we do have to give it up if we are going to find heaven heavenly. Besides, the word translated as “hell” is Gehenna. Far from referring to the afterlife, Gehenna refers to a valley outside Jerusalem that Jeremiah and other prophets said was used for child sacrifice. (Jer. 19: 2–5) This image is most apt for the vulnerability of the “little ones” or “the least of these.” This term does not necessarily refer to children, although because Jesus had recently placed a child among the disciples, it is easy to think that. There is no question, however, that Jesus is referring to all vulnerable people, which certainly includes children.

These considerations would suggest that we need to cut off our rivalrous desires and throw them away so as to avoid the hell of rivalrous contention. The trouble is, we can’t really cut off our desires and throw them away. We are still human if we have one hand or one foot or one eye, but we aren’t human if we don’t have desires. And it isn’t that we have some bad desires we can throw away and some good desires that are keepers. We have desire. Period. So it isn’t a case of cutting off desire but directing it and, when necessary, redirecting it. Such redirection can feel like an amputation for those of us who are addicted to fighting over whether we are the greatest. We have a simple but powerful example of redirecting desire away from rivalry towards charity in the words sandwiched by the apostles’ complaint about the “unauthorized” exorcist and the exhortations to cut off hands and feet if they cause us to stumble. Here Jesus urges us to give a cup of cold water to anyone who bears the name of Christ. (Mk. 9: 41) Such redirection leaves us vulnerable to those who continue to play the hellish game, but Jesus has told us that the kingdom is about being among the least of all people, the most vulnerable. The more we are in touch with our own vulnerability, the more sympathy we have for the vulnerability of others, including the vulnerability of those who try to hide their vulnerability through rivalry. We need these cups of cold water to put out the fires.

On Vigilance

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Jesus sternly admonished his disciples to listen when he said: “There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” (Mk. 7: 15) Surely Jesus wants us to sit up and take notice and think about this. We often worry about what we take into ourselves and there are good reasons for that. After all, there are foods that really are bad for us and there is much in the media that is also bad for us. In the broader conversation in this chapter in Mark, Jesus is calling attention to the ways we let certain externalities of observance distract us from inner and weightier matters. With the long history of censorship in many cultures, Jesus’ words raise the question of whether a preoccupation with what one reads or hears, although worthy of concern, doesn’t also distract one from the truth that is within. If the French thinker René Girard is right about the ongoing influence of the desires of other people on each one of us, then we are indeed ingesting much from our environment, some of it good, but some of it not so good. It’s hard enough to censor books; it is impossible to censor the impact of other peoples’s desires on each of us.

Jesus draws our attention away from what we take into ourselves to what we actually find within ourselves. What do we find there that might come out of us? Jesus says that it is from within the heart “that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.” (Mk. 7: 21-22) Most of us feel defiled when we find such things within ourselves, but Jesus is telling us that we aren’t defiled by the avarice and wickedness within unless we let it out. Then and only then are we defiled by these things. Did these things, or at least some of them, come from without? Maybe. Girard’s notion that we resonate with the desires of other people suggests that is likely the case. But that is not the issue. The question isn’t where these evil thoughts come from, but what we do with them.

In his Epistle, James applies these words that he himself heard straight from Jesus. The anger that we find within ourselves “does not produce God’s righteousness.” (James 1: 20) We should rid ourselves of the “sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” (James 1: 21) Because he heard the words of Jesus and planted them in his heart, James finds other, more positive things within that he can bring out instead of the wickedness inside. If we take in many dysfunctional desires from other people, it makes sense that we would also take in many noble desires as well, such as a desire to pull an ox or a child from a pit, or give a loaf of bread or fish instead of a stone. There are many other good things that can come out of us that make us and others good and holy. All the more reason to consider carefully what we say and do that other people will take in.

These reflections call to mind one of the most important ascetical practices of the early monastic movement: watchfulness, vigilance, the examination of thoughts. It was said of one desert monastic that he would examine his thoughts for an hour before going off to the Sunday worship gathering. Surely this practice was inspired by scripture passages such as this chapter in Mark. As Jesus’ warning suggests, this practice can be unpleasant, humbling, humiliating. But seeing what is within through watchfulness turns out to be a good way to keep what we see from coming out of us. One of the more puzzling stories from the desert movement is about a monastic who tells a troubled disciple that if he is not thinking of fornication, it means he is doing it. These words seem counter-intuitive and absurd, but this chapter in Mark gives us cause to think again. What if we don’t examine our thoughts to see what is within us? For one thing, we project what is within on others and demonize others for what is actually within us. For another, when we don’t examine that which is within us, these very thoughts can escape much more easily and we don’t even realize it because we are busy blaming other people for what we are doing without knowing it. Moses the Black, one of the most famous of the desert monastics, was asked to come to judge a delinquent monastic. He carried a leaky basket full of sand behind his back to the gathering. When questioned, he said that his sins were likewise falling behind him where he could not see them, and he was supposed to judge another. So it is that Moses the Black would counsel us, like Jesus, to remove the beam in my own eye before trying to remove a speck from the eye of another.

Brought Near by the Blood of Christ

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In the second chapter of Ephesians, Paul presents a powerful vision of human unity and reconciliation: a household of God with Jesus the cornerstone. What beautiful words for sore ears, ears sore from the discord and violence breaking out in the world even as we celebrate the Holy Mysteries of the altar. This fact of discord and violence makes it clear that we have not reached this vision. Moreover, there is more than a hint of violence in the fact that the reconciliation has been brought by the blood of Christ. (Eph. 2: 13) The blood of Christ is often skimmed over as a formula to set up something more pleasant, but it refers to a death by torture on a cross of a man who spent a life trying to offer healing and reconciliation.

The French thinker René Girard suggested that from the dawn of history, human society has had a tendency to resolve social tensions through focusing on one person who is blamed for the social tensions. When the person is put to death, things are more peaceful—for a time. The root problem, the entanglement of human desires that leads to violence when it is believed that the objects of desire cannot be shared, does not change, so the cycle starts all over again until, once again, the shared desire reaches concord through focusing the blame on one person, or a group of persons. Girard called it “unanimity minus one.”

This is precisely the story that the Gospels tell: the story of a society ripped apart by many tensions until, suddenly, miraculously, all of the parties that are at each others’ throats suddenly come to an agreement that Jesus must die. But the Gospels proclaim this victim to be innocent, not the one who tore society apart, but the one who tried to bring reconciliation. Indeed, the tensions in Jesus’ time were not resolved with the result that Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70. That this was so was not by chance. The cycle of collective violence only “worked” because the truth was covered up and denied. The Gospels blew the cover, making sure that it will never “work” again, no matter how hard we try.

And yet Paul proclaims a cosmic reconciliation as a result of this violent death. Why? Because Jesus was raised from the dead as the forgiving victim. Paul himself experienced Christ’s forgiveness in a powerful way on the road to Damascus. Jesus did not just preach about forgiving one’s enemies; Jesus practiced it as the risen victim. In so doing, Jesus inaugurated what Paul calls a new creation, a new humanity, a chance for humanity to start over and get it right this time. But when we look at the discord and violence, it is clear we haven’t gotten it right yet. There is some good news inspired by the Good News that is the Gospel, however, namely the massive amounts of charitable work done around the globe to build up dignity for people who are ground down by the discord and violence.

In Mark, we see Jesus having compassion on the people “because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” (Mk. 6: 34) Jeremiah castigated the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep. (Jer. 23: 1) When there is no shepherding or bad shepherding, humanity falls into the cycle of violence that resolves on a victim, the scapegoat. Jeremiah conveyed God’s promise of real shepherds who will care for them. (Jer. 23: 4) Paul insists that Christ is this shepherd, but not a shepherd who nags and scolds but one who shepherds through forgiveness. As the Gentiles and Jews had united in putting Christ to death, Paul says that Christ unites Jews and Gentiles through forgiveness as the risen victim. So Jesus has reconciled Jew and Gentile “to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.” (Eph. 2: 16)

Throughout his preaching, Paul proclaimed this reconciliation of Jew and Gentile, hoping and believing it could happen soon and be the consummation of creation. Yet, that did not happen. Jewish persecution of Christians embittered the early church and anti-Jewish attitudes wrecked havoc on the Church, culminating in the Nazi Holocaust.

Although Gentile-Jewish relations continues to be a burning issue, in the U.S., relations between white and black people is front and center. Black people have been victimized beginning with the slave trade, but it is important to realize that committing such atrocities destroys the humanity of those of us who perpetrate it just as the persecution of Jews destroyed not only Jews but persecutors. Julia Robinson Moore, a black historian and theologian who uses Girard’s thought, has found evidence that the enslavement and suppression of blacks correlates with increased tensions between white people. So it is that blacks become collective victims of social problems among whites. As the Afro-American theologian James Cone said, Jesus is most present on the lynching tree.

In many ways it is frustrating to have Paul’s great vision of reconciliation when the reality of the present time hits us in the face. But it is important to be profoundly grateful for the vision. Proclaiming peace to those who are far off and those who are near is a guiding star, a way for us to be oriented. This vision gives us something to aim for, to hope for. Among other things, this vision gives us a means to test the shepherds who would lead us. Who is more apt to gather and build up? Who is more apt to scatter and destroy? Jesus became such a shepherd by getting all the people to sit together and eat together with what seemed very few loaves of bread and fishes. Such a vision challenges us to want it, really want it. Since this vision means that all of us will be changed, even changed radically, it can be frightening enough for us to hold back. All the more reason to pray to want to want this vision of reconciliation.

This vision can also point to both big and small ways to live it out. Julia Robinson Moore leads a reclamation project for the graves of enslaved persons. She takes students on field trips to spruce up the slave graveyards and she bring the descendants of slaves and enslavers together when they are ready for that move, giving all a chance to affirm the full humanity of the other and to seek mutual healing.

For an introduction to the thought of René Girard see: Living Stones in the House of the Forgiving Victim and Living Together with our Shared Desires.

True Greatness

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It is natural and good to have an affection for the place where one was raised and where one lives. Caring for one’s family, one’s community, one’s city, one’s country is all good. Such affection is the basis for caring for other people. Caring for other people. That is the key. Do we indeed make local affections the basis for caring for people of other cities, of other countries?

In Deuteronomy, Moses grounds his love for his people in God’s love for his people. It is God who has delivered the people from Egypt and is leading them to a new land for them to settle in. Therefore one should fear God for what God has done. (Deut. 10: 21) Moses then expands God’s love for God’s own people by saying that they are commanded to love the stranger. Why love the stranger? Because the Israelites were strangers in Egypt. They should remember their own vulnerability as strangers and care for the vulnerability of other strangers. America is a continent of immigrants, which is to say, strangers. This even goes for those we call Native Americans. For that matter, we find histories of migration for just about any group of people that we know anything about. All of us are vulnerable strangers and all of us should care for vulnerable strangers.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus presupposes the legitimate and right love one has for one’s own people, then, in the tradition of Moses and going beyond it, stretches this love for the stranger to one’s enemies. (Mt. 5: 44) That is to say, God raises the sun, not only on one’s own people, but on all people. After all, caring for one’s own people is the least we can and should do. Isn’t it caring for the stranger that makes a country great? Isn’t it caring for one’s enemy that makes a country greater still?

There is much talk about making America great again. The anniversary of the founding of our country is a good time to reflect on what made America great, or if it actually needs to be made great in the first place. Since penitence is central to the Christian life, repenting of the ways we fall short of greatness is part of the celebration of our country. Noting failures to care for the stranger, the widow and the orphan, let alone loving our enemies, can lead us to greater efforts. If we can do these things, America will indeed be great.

The author of Hebrews takes up the theme of migration with an added depth. Abraham demonstrates his faith by setting forth to a place that he is to receive as an inheritance, (Heb. 11: 8) but actually Abraham and his descendants were seeking “a better country, that is, a heavenly one.” (Heb. 11: 16) We are all migrants seeking a better country that is grounded in God’s love for all people. One’s own land, one’s country, is important, but it is not of ultimate importance. God is of ultimate importance and God has prepared a better homeland for all of us, one that nobody will have to fight over.

Called to Repent

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The calling of Jesus’ first four apostles in Mark is inspiring but it doesn’t make a lot of sense when we think about it. A complete stranger calls four complete strangers and they drop everything and follow him. (Mk. 1: 16–20) We can soften the improbability by noting that it is possible, even likely, that Jesus and these four men had sone acquaintance beforehand. but–let’s face it—answering a call from someone like Jesus just doesn’t make sense except maybe to the person who actually receives the call, and even then, the call tends to be a lot more compelling than sensible. At l east that’s what I still how I feel about my call to the monastic life. After all, a call from God tends to be disruptive to the life one has been living such as being a fisher on the shores of Lake Galilee. Does this call have anything to do with us?

We might try to distance ourselves from this calling by thinking that the apostles were exceptional people, but Mark and the other evangelists stress the ordinariness of the people called by Jesus. It’s professional religious people like ministers and monastics who should feel out of place with those first called. This ordinariness raises the suspicion that God, as Creator, calls everybody whom God has made. Such a call, then, is the norm, not an exception. This supposition is confirmed when St. Paul designates those called by God as members of an ekklesia, a word that means: “Those called out.” So all of us are called and the call makes no sense unless we accept that we are grounded in God as our creator, in which case God’s calling makes perfect, divine, sense. What else is involved with God’s calling of us?.

Jesus’ call of the four fishers follows straight upon Jesus call for repentance because the kingdom of God has come near. (Mk. 1: 15) What do we repent from? From fishing? Nothing wrong with that. As one who loves fish and seafood, I wouldn’t want all fishers to stop their work. Mark says that Jesus’ preaching began right after John had been put into prison. So persecuting prophets like John the Baptist is something we might want to repent of. But what if we are peaceful people who don’t persecute prophets, or think we don’t? In the Book of Jonah, the prophet calls on the Ninevites to repent—and they do! Since they were a violent society, one that had attacked Israel and destroyed the Northern kingdom, they had a lot of violence to repent of. But what if we aren’t invading other peoples’ countries? Jonah’s call for the Ninevites’s repentance circles back to Israel and the rest of us in a couple of ways. If Nineveh can repent surely Israel can repent; we can repent. More to the point, since Ninevites were violent enemies to Israel, who wants them to repent and become God’s people like us? Jonah didn’t want them. The call to witness to and welcome such strangers gets to the nub of what repentance is all about. It can be pretty disruptive to what we’re used to.

In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, Paul offers some cryptic directions for how we might repent: “those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them.” (1 Cor. 7: 29–31) Does this mean we should repent of marriage, shopping, mourning, or being happy? As Paul would say: “Me genoito!”—by no means! We can get some help with this passage by looking at the concept of mimetic desire on the part of the French thinker René Girard. Mimetic desire, as Girard conceives it, is the human tendency to want something, not because I want it but because somebody else wants it. This can lead to peaceful sharing but it can and does lead to violence. In this problematic passage in First Corinthians, Paul is showing his own profound insight into mimetic desire. It is bad enough to want what someone else has got just because that person has it and presumably wants to keep it. This scenario is greatly exacerbated when the person who has something purposely (though sometimes subconsciously) tries to inflame other peoples’ desire for what one has. Dostoevsky understood this problem profoundly. His intensely puzzling novel The Idiot becomes understandable when one realizes how Parfyon Semyonovich Rogozhin is stirring Prince Mjishkin’s desire for Natasha Philppovna in order to vindicate his own desire for her, and Aglaya Ivanova Epanchin, in turn, tries to intensify Natashya’s desire for the Prince, whom she had in hand until she played this game—all of this unfolds with tragic results. Paul would have us steer clear of this pitfall by being detached, not only from what we don’t have, but at least as much from what we do have. This misuse of mimetic desire is what Paul would have us repent of. This sort of detachment transforms the way we experience the world.

As Jesus’ ministry progresses, the disciples don’t look good, and Mark’s portrayal of them is the most negative. Perhaps the most egregious example of the disciples’ obtuseness is the way the disciples fight over who is the greatest in the face of Jesus’ predictions of his upcoming death and resurrection. Such infighting imitates the Ninevites rather than the Lord they are ostensibly following. Constant repentance, then, is needed to help us clarify what following Jesus is all about, and we have to expect it to take time. So let’s not waste any time getting started.