June 24, 2012

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 4

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I read the last book in the Bible - the Book of Revelation - the other week. I don’t recommend it. You need to have some pretty serious filters to strain out the blood, goodies vs. baddies, militarism, and hierarchical male god in order to find much of spiritual benefit to our 21st century lives. Yet, on the other hand, beneath the words, there is a context and message that still needs to be heard.

Two of my spiritual heroes Dan and Phil Berrigan went to the Book of Revelation regularly for sustenance. The Berrigan brothers, for those who forget the 60s and 70s, were catholic religious, poets, and activists. Although they consistently challenged the gap between rich and poor they are most remembered for their anti-war protests. Like the time they poured their own blood on draft files in Baltimore, or homemade napalm on the same in Cantonsville, Maryland. Or the time they entered the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in Pennsylvania and began to hammer the nose cones into ploughshares. They were throwing pebbles at a Goliath. Both Philip and Dan spent considerable time in prison.

Like the early Christian experience that shaped the Book of Revelation, the Berrigans understood their faith to be in opposition to the macro-myths of their society. They saw America as an empire, like Rome, thirsting for power and gold, willing to kill to get it, justifying itself by feeding the populace platitudes about ‘peace’, and co-opting and domesticating religion. It was a harsh and pointed critique at a time when America was killing its own young in the forests of Vietnam, to say nothing of what it was doing to the locals there, and anaesthetizing American religion with an apolitical individualistic god. This critique was not dissimilar to the political-religious perception of St John the Divine who created a book full of symbols and imagery to challenge the imperial idolatry of his day.

It is from the Book of Revelation that we hear repeatedly of ‘the Beast’, ‘the whore’, and ‘Babylon’ (all are references to Rome). We hear of ‘Armageddon’, ‘white robed martyrs’, and the salvific ‘blood of the Lamb’. The context is a persecuted Christian minority being exhorted to stand firm in their faith, despite imprisonment and death, and being comforted with the thought of their god’s eventual triumph over the prevailing tyranny of the Empire. The writer, St John, is extremely poetic and creative, drawing imagery from the Hebrew Bible, and spinning a picture of hope.

There is no doubt that today we as a Church all too often fail to follow the lead of St John and the Berrigans. The accepted myths about power, leadership, success, beauty and money, and the political policies they give rise to, run counter to the wisdom of Jesus. Myths like the ‘rich deserve their riches and the poor have made their own poverty’ frequently provide the background mood music to national social and fiscal policies. 

There is also no doubt that today the poetry of the Book of Revelation is an irrelevant, even dangerous, relic used most frequently by fundamentalist preachers pedalling a religion steeped in fear, predicting [yet again] the end of world, and the need for individuals to repent and to give the preacher their money. Yet rather than just discard the relic we need to see the book as an encouragement to write our own poetry and prose critiquing the folly and idols of our day and encouraging Christians to stand up and speak up.

The one image that I find of any value in St John’s work is the lamb. Put aside the associated blood stuff with its allusions to dead first-born sons of Egyptians and an omnipotent deity who demands pure blood [like that of his only son] before He can forgive us. I know those blood images are strong and disturbing, but try to put them to one side for a moment and just think about a lamb. A lamb is young, lacking in defences, not exactly a leader or very wise. Indeed the lamb is an image of vulnerability. The lamb is vulnerable, dependent, and weak. The lamb image is the very opposite of Empire’s invincible, independent, and all powerful potentate.

If we take the image of lamb as a divine portrait seriously then the whole power structure becomes inverted. God is no longer the one with the bigger muscle than Caesar. God doesn’t have a muscle. God isn’t the supreme alpha male. God isn’t even the shepherd. 

Indeed if you read Revelation closely it doesn’t actually picture God as anything. God, as in the Hebrew tradition, is too other, too beyond our constructs to be pictured. But it does point to a ‘lamb’, a Jesus who made himself vulnerable by costly self-giving love and confronting the powers which destroy the justice and mutuality such love demands. It is, says Revelation, this lamb that is worthy of worship.

The key question arising from the Book of Revelation for our time is what are you and I prepared to die for? Now, I know dying as a concept is over-rated, as is martyrdom. The best thing you can do if you love your friends and family is live for them, not die for them. So care for yourselves, as you care for others. When the military turn up to your door with guns and batons run like hell and hide. Keep living.

That said most martyrs I know of didn’t chose to die, and didn’t want to. The choices were different than that. Think of Oscar Romero, a Catholic bishop of El Salvador, who was gunned down in 1980. He openly criticized the government and the military in their privileging the wealthy and powerful while the majority of people lived in abject poverty. He spoke out against the terror tactics used to enforce that privileging. He spoke out against the church where it was complicit. My point is he didn’t die because he wanted to, or because he believed in the doctrine of the Trinity or Atonement or Incarnation or something… Rather he died because by word and deed Oscar held to the values known in the vulnerability of Jesus – values of justice, mutuality, and love.

Think too of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a brilliant German Lutheran theologian, whose strong opposition to Hitler's euthanasia programmes and the genocide against the Jews lead to his involvement in planning to assassinate the Fuhrer. He was executed in 1945. Like Romero, Bonhoeffer lived a life of integrity, critical of the church as well as the state, caring ultimately for the relationship between truth and justice, and denying because of the dissonance between them. My point again is he didn’t die because he wanted to, or because of some erudite beliefs disconnected from people’s lives… Rather he died because by word and deed Dietrich held to the values known in the vulnerability of Jesus – values of justice, mutuality, and love.

When I was asked the other day, “Glynn, what would you go to the wall for?” my immediate response was “For the right of a woman to wear a burqa on the streets of Paris”. I was being both cheeky and serious. 

I think the justice and vulnerability of Jesus leads me to affirm and celebrate the diversity of religions and cultures on this planet and not to presume that my religion or culture is superior and can be imposed on others. I think too the justice and vulnerability of Jesus leads me to affirm the right of every human being to make free and independent choices that don’t physically harm others, even if I don’t like those choices. I think too the justice and vulnerability of Jesus leads me to question and challenge the structural, political injustices that work against the poor, against most women, against most minorities, and against most people of colour.

But I probably won’t end up ‘going to the wall’, so to speak, for a burqa. I find I end up speaking out on lots of things, and I’m never sure what the powerful are going to find offensive. I’d like to think that whatever happens in the future people would remember me as caring more about how we behave towards one another rather than the niceties of what we believe about God, as caring that love is affirmed and celebrated, wherever and whenever it manifests, rather than making rules and boundaries to control it, and caring for those excluded from the centres of power rather than ingratiating myself to those who dwell there. Yet you never know quite what will happen – it could be for something as minor as making a joke on a billboard. Come to think of it, maybe it was that joke Jesus made about a camel through the eye of a needle that sealed his future.