Tag Archives: René Girard

On Welcoming Jesus

Posted on by
Reply

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?

A Cup of Cold Water

Posted on by
1

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
1

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.

The Wounded Messiah

Posted on by
Reply

Just when the people in Jerusalem are marveling over the healing of a cripple, Peter tells them that it was by the power of the very man they handed over to Pilate to be crucified that the cripple was healed. A cripple has been brought to life, so to speak, since he was functionally dead up to that point, by a man who was killed. Life and death have been brought together with the implication that the people are being offered a choice between life and death.

Peter accentuates the point by reminding them that they “disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked that a murderer be released” to them. (Acts 3: 14) One would think that a choice between Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus Barabbas would be an easy one. After all, who wants to release a murderer and kill a manifestly just person? Well, everybody in Jerusalem it seems. Huh? The French thinker René Girard helps us understand this strange choice. In a nutshell Girard argued that society tends to resolve its crises through the collective murder of a person who is then blamed for the crisis. In his sermons in Acts, Peter clearly states that an innocent man was put to death by the people who were embroiled in social conflict. That Barabbas was also said to be an insurrectionist puts him right in the middle of the social conflict. What about Jesus of Nazareth, who Peter called “the author of life?” Jesus was the one person who was not positioned within the conflict. He was too busy being the author of life. But being the author of life had him in conflict with everybody: Pharisees and Sadducees both. That made it easy for the two main parties and then the Roman authorities, who normally hated each other, to agree on one thing: Do away with Jesus. Precisely the scenario hypothesized by Girard. This societal choice of death over life keeps a society rooted in death..

Peter sounds accusatory when he reminds the people of Jerusalem what they have done. The overall context however, is an offer of forgiveness: “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,” (Acts 3: 19) This seems like a cheap way out for such a monstrous crime, but this forgiveness can only be activated by accepting the reality of what has been done. This is the importance of remembering the truth of what we have done. The history of white racism in the United States and the protracted difficulty in facing up to the truth of what has been done is an example of how hard accepting such truths can be and the amount of courage it takes to fully repent. That the truth about lynching, acts of collective violence, are especially hard to accept for what they are, is particularly telling. (Or not, as telling is what is normally avoided.) It is repenting through truly remembering that frees us of the past. Otherwise, we repeat the past by choosing death over the author of life time and time again. But just as the cripple has been healed by the Risen Lord, so we, too, have the chance to be healed by the author of life.

Peter excuses the people of Jerusalem on account of ignorance. They didn’t know what they were doing. This, of course, is precisely what Girard says of collective violence: the crowd does not know what it is doing when it is doing it. This is also precisely why remembering the truth is as difficult as it is important. This excuse is curiously coupled with the prophets foretelling that the Messiah would suffer. As Luke and the other synoptic Gospel writers make clear, it was not obvious to Peter and the other disciples that the Messiah would suffer until Jesus was crucified and raised from the dead with the wounds still visible in his hands, feet, and side. And yet Jesus needed only to point to the fates of the prophets, including the Psalmist, to make it clear that this is so. No wonder the crowd in Jerusalem didn’t know that when they put Jesus to death.

One would think that a person raised from the dead would be perfectly healthy and fit, but that is not the case. Even in his risen body, Jesus still bears the wounds inflicted when he was on the cross. More amazing yet, there is no sign that these wounds are cause for resentment. There is the question of whether or not the wounds were still painful. Perhaps not but probably so. Wounds that don’t hurt aren’t real. That Jesus bears these wounds without resentment attests to his profound forgiveness of what we have done. This total lack of resentment transforms these wounds. Moreover, if the wounds don’t go away, then we are permanently reminded of their reality. Again, we must remember what we have done or we will repeat the same collective violence time and again. This reflection can give us more insight into our own wounds, both wounds inflicted on us and the wounds we have inflicted on others which, of course wound us as well. The healed cripple walks, but he walks with the history of having been crippled for years.

In his First Epistle, John tells us that we do not yet know what we will be. In context of the wounded Messiah, we don’t know what we will be with our own wounds. But “when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1 Jn. 3: 2) Once we truly know Jesus as the wounded and forgiving Messiah, we too will be wounded and forgiving. All of this is enveloped in God’s love that makes us children of God

For an introduction to René Girard see: Living Stones in the House of the Forgiving Victim: Abiding in Humanity’s Deepest Connections and Living Together With Our Shared Desires

Glamor and Glory Transfigured

Posted on by
Reply

It is a source of insight that the word “glamor” normally refers to a pleasing quality, one that makes the rich and famous rich and famous, but it can also mean a spell that exerts power over other people. When we think of a Hollywood actress as glamorous, we think that is a good thing, but such an actress does tend to put a spell on those devoted to her. Such careers are considered glorious, also a good thing. The word “glory” has a rich ambiguity in biblical studies. When we read the word “glory” in scripture, especially as an attribute of God, we think it means something wonderful, and sometimes it does. But the Greek word doxa can mean the opposite: disgrace. As James Alison said in one of his writings, doxa actually means “reputation.” A reputation can be good or bad. When applied to humans, glory, doxa, is associated with human glory that tends to be violent, for example a victor in war. That was the kind of glory that Roman emperors strove for and often got. If we find life dull or downright oppressive, then we crave for some glamor and glory. We want to be bespelled by someone glamorous. The glory of a victory parade for a victorious football team makes life exciting and well, glorious. For the winners anyway. Not so much for the losers.

I have come to see that these concepts of glamor and glory were instilled in me before I had any way of knowing it was happening. They were two of many filters that informed my reactions to life and still do as reflex reactions. It is unavoidable that such a thing should happen to me and everybody else. Humans are cultural animals and that means we get cultured. Becoming aware of how we are cultured and then trying to change the culture when that is desirable, is a an important challenge. René Girard, gave us much insight into this phenomenon when he wrote about the natural way humans share desires. We don’t live with our own desires, as we think; rather, we live in a sea of desires of others all around us. The desires for glamor and glory are among the desires shared among all of us.

This inculturation had an affect on how I first reacted to the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor. One could say that the image of a resplendent Jesus cast something of a glamor on me, especially with the help of Raphael’s great painting. There was much that was theologically sound in this reaction. I took it as a vision of the potential transfiguration of all creation, as Gerard Manley Hopkins said: “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Many gloriously beautiful works of music also transfigure the world. The Transfiguration made Jesus look like a winner, what with hanging out with two heavyweight bigwigs from the Hebrew scriptures, and in a sense that was true, but Jesus was not the kind of winner who gets ticker tape parades down Fifth Avenue.

Countering this inculturation of glamor and glory was the awareness that Jesus was about to begin the trip to Jerusalem where he was going to die on the cross. Adding a celebration of the Transfiguration at the final Sunday of Epiphany, the last Sunday before Lent, did a lot to shift attention in that direction, but there was still a tendency to think of the Transfiguration as an encouragement to the disciples—and to us—before the grimness of Lent sets in and we follow the Way of the Cross. The reactions of the disciples—the closest disciples of Jesus—fits the same inculturation of glamor and glory that I grew up with two thousand years later.

What I have come to see–and I have to give credit to thinkers like René Girard and James Alison for this—is that the disgrace of crucifixion is the glamor and glory, not the transfigured light. That is, Jesus wins glory by losing. It is because Jesus became the victim of the religious and secular powers that Jesus showed his radiance as the transfigured human. This kind of transfiguration is ugly when we take the gold plate and jewels off so many crosses gilded by them and focus on the ugly death on the cross. But this ugliness shows us the truth of the violence we inflict on each other in our search for glamor and glory. In Mark, Jesus calls himself “The Son of Man.” Much ink has been spilled on defining the phrase, but the most convincing interpretation is that it means roughly the true human being. In order to be true, Jesus had to undergo an ugly death of suffering precisely because so many other people had suffered death and mutilation and humiliation before Jesus and continue to do so, up to the present day. Much of this inflicted suffering has resulted in glory and glamor for the winners but Jesus has shown us the truth of that glory and glamor, and it isn’t pretty.

Should we toss out all bejeweled crosses? I think not. The thing to do is discern the truth in the glitter. In the great hymn Crux fidelis, the cross is “richly jeweled” but it is consecrated by the Lamb’s blood when Jesus was “nailed and mocked and parched.” We can appreciate the glamor of movie stars and electrifying pianists, but we need to watch for victims when glory has rolled over them in its wake. To quote Paul: ‘For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.” (2 Cor. 4: 6) The face of Christ is a crucified face. Paul confirms this when he says: “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Cor. 4: 10) Yes, the Transfiguration does point to the Resurrection and Ascension, but the only route is through the cross. The ugly death of Jesus is the source, the stream of living water flowing by the tree of life whose leaves offer healing for all nations. (Rev. 22: 2)

For more about René Girard see: Living Stones in the House of the Forgiving Victim and Living Together with our Shared Desires

Called to Repent

Posted on by
3

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.

On Taking the Lowest Place

Posted on by
1

Jesus’ parable of the important seats is easy to understand. It’s one of the first parables I learned as a young child in Sunday school. It could easily have come from any of the sitcoms I watched at that age. I can imagine Jackie Gleason barging into a dining hall and rushing for the best seat at the table, followed by his spluttering rage when he’s told he has to sit over in a corner.

In this parable, Jesus shows a profound awareness of social contagion, a phenomenon analyzed with much insight by René Girard. What Girard articulates is our human tendency to receive desires from other people. In the case of the banquet, the more some people want the best places, the more other people will want the best places just because other people want them. If some people think some places are the best and rush for those, then other people will desire those places because other people want them.

One way to get some perspective on this parable is to reflect on the kind of person who rushes for the best seat and the kind of person who holds back. The kind of person who holds back is apt to be more kind than the other, or at least not so unkind. The thing is, reaching the best seat can be a kind of pyrrhic victory. One might have the prestige of being a CEO, the president of the United States, or the center of a social set, but if such a one treats people badly, that person will not be liked or respected on a personal level, even if there is respect for the position. It’s a way of saying one might gain the world and lose one’s soul. One has lost one’s soul to the social contagion that blunts concern for the well-being of other people. In fact, although this parable doesn’t speak of darker alternatives, it is easy to imagine the rush for the highest place resulting in a violent free-for-all. This is what Girard says is likely to have happened at the dawn of humanity, and the free-for-all resulted in everybody converging on a victim. It isn’t easy to escape the power of this social contagion but if one takes notice of Jesus, then one sees an alternative.

To begin with, Jesus is not giving us a social strategy for getting the best place by being laid back. Jesus would have us realize that grabbing one of the best places at a dinner party or pushing for social dominance over others is not where our priority should be. Rather than trying to get the highest place, one should be content with the place one happens to have and do the best one can in that place while attending to the needs of others, which is the best way to be given a higher place due to one’s accomplishment. But there is more.

Jesus didn’t just take a middling place; he took the lowest place. His preaching ministry, for all the acclaim it received from many people, gained the opprobrium of those who thought they had the highest places and wanted to keep them. These people sentenced him to a criminal’s death, death on a cross. That was the lowest place there was in the Roman world at the time. But then Jesus was raised from the dead by his heavenly Abba and raised to his Abbas’s right hand in Heaven which is about as far up as one can go. Such is the Christological level of this parable. Who would have thought that a sitcom scenario could outline the story of our redemption?

For more on René Girard, see Violence and the Kingdom of God, Living Stones in the House of the Forgiving Victim, and Living Together with our Shared Desires.

The Risen and Ascended Living Interpreter of Scripture

Posted on by
Reply

In Luke’s Gospel, the first thing Jesus does after rising from the dead is explain the scriptures to two of his followers on the Road to Emmaus, explaining how it was “necessary” that the Messiah “suffer these things and then enter his glory.” (Lk. 24: 26) The last thing Jesus does before his Ascension is explain the scriptures to the disciples in the same way. Understanding this “necessity” is a tricky business. For whom was it “necessary?” It is ludicrous to suggest that it was “necessary” for God that the Messiah should suffer. On the contrary, Luke, like the other Gospel writers, tells the story of Jesus’ execution on the cross in such a way as to stress the necessity on the part of humans that Jesus die in order to bring “peace” to Jerusalem. The key to understanding the scriptures that Jesus opened his disciples’s minds to is this human necessity that the Messiah (Jesus) die so that “repentance for the forgiveness of sins. . . be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” Lk. 24: 47) So what was “necessary” for God? For God the only thing necessary was to raise Jesus from the dead so that he could continue to open our minds to the true meaning of the scriptures as a living interpreter.

Luke’s Gospel and its sequel, Acts, reveals quite clearly the human tendency to solve social problems through collective violence as theorized by René Girard. But these writings also reveal a deeper and much brighter truth about the human potential for sympathy and empathy. This is where Resurrection and Ascension, repentance and forgiveness, all come in. In announcing the Jubilee in his inaugural sermon in Luke, Jesus proclaims a gathering through sympathy and caring rather than through competitive tensions and violence. This new gathering involves freeing prisoners, giving sight to the blind, and setting the oppressed free. (Lk. 4: 18) In his teaching, Jesus makes the words quoted from Isaiah his own in his famous parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. In opening the scriptures to the disciples, Jesus is not only revealing the truth of collective violence but also the human potential for sympathy that leads to forgiveness and reconciliation as taught in these parables. From there, Jesus leads us even deeper into the self-giving love shown on the cross, a love we too may need to embrace. More important by far, Jesus embodies this teaching and revelation in his own act of forgiveness and thus enables the same in each of us.

A dead Messiah wouldn’t be available to enact and enable repentance, forgiveness and costly self-giving. Only a Messiah who is very much alive can do that. This is why Jesus, having been raised from the dead and now ascended into heaven, is seated at the “right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” (Eph. 1: 20–21) The image of all things placed under Jesus’ feet suggests the earthly rulers who use their fallen enemies as a footstool. (Ps. 110: 1) I suspect this is the image the disciples have when they ask Jesus just before the Ascension if now he is “to restore the kingdom to Israel.” (Acts 1: 6) But Jesus, in opening the scriptures to the disciples, has revealed his kingship to be one of sympathy, forgiveness, and compassion; in short a kingship based on the Jubilee proclaimed at the start of his ministry. Rather than thumping his foot on us, Jesus bends down and raises us up to his seat. In revealing his true kingship, Jesus has not only opened up the scriptures to us, but he has opened up the truth of human history as well, a truth more glorious than the “necessary” violence that we think gives life its “meaning.” As the key to scripture and history, Jesus fulfills Paul’s prayer that “the eyes of [our] hearts may be enlightened in order that [we] may know the hope to which he has called [us], the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” (Eph. 1: 18–19)

Not One Stone Upon Another

Posted on by
Reply

It is one of many signs that Jesus’ disciples still don’t “get it” when they ooh and ah about the beautiful temple that Herod has built. Haven’t they noticed that Jesus doesn’t see Herod as a model ruler? Did they notice that Jesus wrecked havoc in the temple? Did they think about what the gesture might mean? The chief priests most certainly were thinking very hard about it and their thoughts were very hard. If any of the above notions were going through their heads, they might not have been so startled when Jesus predicted that “not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” (Mk. 13: 2)

It is important to realize, as pretty much all biblical scholars have noted, that prophecy is not fortune telling about the future, but is a word of where the present trends are leading unless there is a change of course. For example, many prophets warned that the injustices in their time were destroying the social fabric and were going to lead to a violent end. Throughout his teaching, Jesus gave a threefold set of warnings: 1) Social injustices connected to the temple were unraveling the religious system. (The scribes and Pharisees “devour widows’ houses.” (Mk. 12: 40.) 2) The threat of rebelling against Rome will redound on the Jewish people. 3) The religious leaders and the imperial leaders were on course to commit lethal violence against Jesus, as he warned in the Parable of the Evil Workers in the Vineyard. (Mk. 12: 1–12)

We can see readily enough that the social violence is human violence through and through and it has nothing to do with God. Mark’s Gospel also tells a story of human collective violence directed at one person who is deemed responsible for the social crisis in Judea. If social ills of institutionalized violence and scapegoating are the work of humans and not God, what about the apocalyptic violence in Mark 13? Jesus does mention earthquakes, which are natural disasters and not God’s doing, but mostly Jesus warns of “wars and rumor of wars,” and nations rising against nation. (Mk. 13: 7–8) Once again, we have human acts, only on a grander scale. Here we have Jesus’ warning of the ineluctable results of staging a violent rebellion against Rome. This violence causes social ties to break down to the extent that “brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death.” (Mk. 13: 12) Jesus then warns of being handed over to councils and then standing “before governors and kings.” (Mk. 13: 9) The chaotic violence circles back to collective violence against a few victims. The technical term for religious cataclysmic literature is “apocalypse,” which means unveiling. Many people think that apocalyptic literature reveals God, but actually it reveals the truth of human violence.

In this analysis of violence, I have been greatly helped by the French thinker René Girard who argued that from the dawn of civilization, there has been a tendency of humans to solve social problems by suddenly gaining up on a victim or a small group of victims with lethal results. The peace following each gruesome episode was so dramatic that it was seen as an “act of god.” It is no wonder that societies founded on collective violence would be sustained by ongoing social violence. There is no time to explain Girard’s arguments further, but it is worth noting that all the Gospels end with the story of the collective murder of Jesus while stressing the human action that caused it. Girard also warns us that although the Gospel Story has opened the way to renewing society through concern for previously overlooked victims, it also greases the breaks that collective violence had previously put on social crises with the result that such crises spin out of control with no end in sight. This is precisely what we see going on all around us as I speak.

Although Jesus’ warnings about violence include violence that one might suffer, such as the violence Jesus suffered and his followers would suffer in the future, the warnings mostly concern inflicting violence upon others. That is, he is warning his listeners to refrain from the violence of social injustice, the violence of collective violence against a victim, and the violence of social upheaval that will only escalate violence. There is much fully justified therapeutic concern for victims of violence, but the trauma of committing violence is also severe. In fact, on a spiritual level, it is more devastating. What is so tragic about the trauma of inflicting violence is that so often one thinks that it is violence that reveals God. Jesus is telling us that we need to make a 180-degree turn to see God. An oppressive social order where some people are perpetual victims is not a God-given order. As Matthew 25 show us clearly, God is seen only in the victims of such a social order. Others turn to the social chaos of social upheaval, proclaiming that God is in the violence. But in Mark, Jesus makes it clear that God has nothing to do with the violence. The designated disrupter of the social order is the one believed to be designated by God for death or exile. In Isaiah, the people thought that the “Suffering Servant” was “stricken by God.” (Is. 53: 4) Mark tells us at the end of the Gospel that God is seen in a man dying in agony and despair on a cross. Keeping our attention fixed there will be our only defense before the powerful, which isn’t much of a defense. But it is the only way we can point to God in a world that is falling apart. Any other way will leave us with not one stone left upon another.

For introductory essays on René Girard, see:

Violence and the Kingdom of God

Living Stones in the House of the Forgiving Victim

Living with our Shared Desires