“When Jesus has somehow become pro-rich, pro-war and only pro-American,
many of us feel that our faith has been stolen, and it’s time to take
it back.” — Jim Wallis
I am one who feels like our faith has been stolen, and it is now time to take it back. Feeling
like our faith had been stolen or perhaps hijacked was one of the main
factors that propelled me into seminary and into ordained ministry.
From
a very early age, I have had a love-hate relationship with the church.
In my younger days, especially during my college and graduate school
years, I wanted nothing to do with the church. For me, it had become an
institution void of meaning and relevance for my life. It was sometime
after graduate school before I started to go back to church, for
reasons I can’t quite explain.
Despite that area being
relatively conservative, I was fortunate to find a church with a number
of like-minded progressives. Despite my misgivings about Christianity,
it was here that I began to see new possibilities for the church. It
was here that I was introduced to the likes of Marcus Borg, Walter Wink
and Liberation Theology. Excited by such knowledge, I began the process
that would take me to seminary and into ordained ministry. While there
is still much in the church that is void of meaning and bears little
relevance for life in the 21st century, I do not think that is the way
it has always been. The church (Christianity) doesn’t have to remain
meaningless and irrelevant.
Throughout the centuries we have, by and large, turned Christianity into a religion of beliefs. Unfortunately,
the more resolute and stubborn the person is in discussing his or her
beliefs, the stronger we consider their faith. If a person is not even
willing to discuss (honest discussion includes the possibility of
change) their beliefs, they are considered “true believers.” The only
problem with this assessment is that the Bible, especially the Gospels,
is not overly concerned with beliefs. That is not to say that beliefs
have nothing to do with faith; they are just not all that important.
So
how do we begin to take Christianity back? As astonishing as this may
sound, I believe the place to begin is with Jesus himself. One of the most important beliefs in the Bible is the liberation of the Israelite slaves from Egyptian slavery. It
was God’s act of freeing people from an oppressive imperial rule that
really sets the tone for the rest of the Bible and the Christian faith.
In many ways, the gospels portray Jesus as reconstituting and updating
the Exodus event. Matthew works especially hard to make this connection
in his story about Jesus, providing several allusions to Moses and the
Exodus through the gospel.
The first such allusion occurs
shortly after Jesus’ birth and his flight to Egypt (Mt 2.16 cf. Exodus
1.16 & 2.3ff). Then after Herod’s death Jesus comes up out of Egypt
before going to Galilee. These allusions help us to see that Jesus is a
new Moses, who is meant to liberate the people from a new Egypt
(empire).
The confrontation between imperialism and Jesus’
alternative way of life (the kingdom of God), takes center stage in the
story of Jesus’ temptation (Mt 4.8ff), where “Satan” is analogous to
empire and imperialism. Matthew continues the illusion to Moses by
placing Jesus on a Mountain for his sermon on what this alternative
life might look like (Mt 5-7 The Sermon on the Mount cf. with Moses and
Sinai).
In Mt 5.28 Jesus tells his disciples that he came to
“give his life as a ransom for many,” a ransom is what was paid to
liberate a slave from slavery. Despite the more metaphorical meaning
this passage has developed over the centuries, there can be little
doubt that this is really about liberating the people from empire.
Jesus
directly confronts the affects of empire and imperialism in the healing
of the Gerasene Demoniac (Mk 5.1-20: note the demons’ name is legion a
Roman military term, and the demons are cast into a herd of hogs, the
symbol of the legion stationed in the area). The Gospels clearly
portray a Jesus who is anti-imperial and whose mission was to make
available an alternative way of living. That is why early Christians
were often referred to as “people of the way.” These Christians lived
in an alternative way to the way of the empire (John 17.14-18).
Unfortunately, in the latest empire (Pax Americana) the world has
managed to assimilate the word for its own purposes.
How does a church living amidst the latest empire begin to regain the word of truth given to it 2,000 years ago? At
least a part of the solution must be regaining an appreciation for
Christianity as an alternate way of life, one that confronts empire
directly and its pro-rich, pro-war, pro-nationalistic agenda. It is a
way of life that won’t be easy, as many of the later books of the Bible
will attest (especially Revelation).
This type of Christianity
is less concerned with what is going on in the bedroom, and more
concerned with the structure of our society that continues to exploit
human beings and nature for the benefit of the few over the many. Like
our brothers and sisters 2,000 years ago, it is time once again for
Christians to be known as people of the way, instead of by the rigidity
of our belief system. This is not a militaristic Christianity, but one
that puts forward new possibilities for God’s love and justice through
humble service to all.
Why did Jesus die?
One of the most familiar photos of the last half of the 20th century is
of an unknown rebel as he stands before a column of tanks leaving
Tiananmen Square. This photo has captured the imaginations of
many in the West. Time Magazine even named the unknown rebel as one of
the 20th century’s 100 most influential people. Part of what
has captured our imaginations is that, despite the enormous odds, this
lone man stood up against oppression, exploitation, etc. It is obvious
that we hold revolutionary ideals in highest regard, after all our own
country was founded on the ideals of a revolution.
Yet, I am
always amazed how quickly people will dismiss the idea that Jesus was a
rebel; one who challenged the political worldview of his day (as well
as ours). The political nature of Jesus’ ministry is brought
to the forefront in the events of Holy Week (the week leading to Good
Friday and Easter).
Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, the day
the church celebrates Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. This was a well
thought-out and planned lampoon of the Roman Empire and its way of life
(Mark 11.1-11). On the same day Jesus was entering Jerusalem from the
east, Pontius Pilate would have been entering the city from the west.
Pilate’s procession would have been much different than Jesus’
procession. Pilate’s entry would have been preceded by a grand parade
of Roman military might, war stallions, chariots and row upon row of
soldiers decked out in their finest clothing, analogous to the modern
day May Day parade.
Jesus’ procession into Jerusalem had no
soldiers, cavalry on war stallions, etc., it was just a lone man riding
on a small colt, a colt most likely not even big enough to keep Jesus’
feet from dragging on the ground (Mark 11.2). Instead of the procession
being greeted by the city dignitaries and wealthy families, Jesus’
procession was greeted by peasants who threw down their cloaks and
waved palm branches. The procession of the palms was meant to
be a piece of street theater, lampooning Roman military might and its
way of governing, while at the same time epitomizing a new world view.
The
two processions represented two different ways to peace; Rome believed
in peace through violence and killing, while Jesus’ procession enacted the idea of
peace through non-violence and being killed. Or God’s justice, which is more holistic than our current
understanding of justice.
When we talk about justice we often
reduce it to the protection of rights, procedural justice. While
ensuring human rights is important, God’s justice is more encompassing
than just the idea of the freedom of the individual. Procedural justice
would say that as long as I have a right to own property, to worship
freely, etc., and you have the same right to own property, to worship,
etc. then things are just.
God’s justice includes human
rights, but it is principally about establishing the common good. The
common good does not mean what is good for the greatest number of
people, but what is good for everyone. In the parable of the laborers
in the vineyard (Matthew 20.1-16), the vineyard owner pays everyone a
day’s wage, the minimum amount needed to live a subsistence lifestyle,
whether they worked all day or for just an hour or two. This is just,
because it is not the laborers fault that they did not find work in the
morning and regardless how long the laborers worked they still deserved
a wage that would allow them to live.
The procession with the
palms put Jesus on the inevitable path towards the crucifixion, not
because God willed Jesus to suffer and die, but because Rome and its
collaborators could not allow an alternative worldview. Jesus’
death was not about taking the sin of the world upon himself, instead
his life was about confronting the sin in the world. Jesus’ life
inaugurated the kingdom of God.
Unfortunately, things have not
changed much in the last 2,000 years; we still largely believe that the
way to achieve peace is through violence and killing. We won the Cold War
by spending more on weapons than the Soviet Union, and now we are
attempting to bring peace to the Middle East, by ‘winning’ a war in
Iraq. Fortunately, Jesus has given us a different worldview; the way to
peace is through God’s justice. Maybe that is why we often downplay
seeing Jesus as a rebel, because we are more comfortable with the
current order of the world. Holy Week and the hope of the
resurrection is our calling to embrace Jesus’ non-violent way of life,
of working for justice so that some semblance of peace can be achieved
in our world (Mark 8.34-38).
Why do
Christians have such a problem with homosexuality? I'm not sure. Some of the most hateful and prejudiced
rhetoric, all espoused in the name of God, is used to condemn homosexuality. Condemnation
of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) persons by Christians is the
result of people reading their own prejudices and homophobia into the biblical
text, rather than anything the Bible itself says. When it comes to sexual morality the Bible is
ambiguous at best and takes no demonstrable position on homosexuality.
Most people
would agree with the Bible in rejecting incest, rape, adultery (at least in
theory), and intercourse with animals, but would disagree with the Bible on
other sexual morals. For instance, the
Bible allows polygamy, levirate marriage (Gen 38), sex with slaves, concubinage
(Gen 16.1, 30.3, 30.9), the treatment of women as property, and very early
marriage for girls (as early as 11 to 13).
The Bible also considered semen and menstrual blood to make people
unclean, but we do not. The Bible
generally prohibits sex during menstruation, exogamy (marriage with
non-Israelites), naming of sexual organs, masturbation, and birth control, all
of which, with minor exceptions are generally permitted. Because of the Bible’s ambiguity, all of us, whether
conservative or progressive, pick and choose which biblical sexual morals we
will follow.
So what does the
Bible have to say about homosexuality?
Well, technically speaking, nothing. There was no word for “homosexuality”
in the biblical languages (or in any other ancient language for that matter). There are no words for “heterosexuality” or “bisexuality”
in the biblical languages either. It
wasn’t until 1946 that the word homosexual made it into an English translation
of the Bible, just to be clear that is approximately 1,946 years after the
birth of Christ. The biblical writers had
no knowledge of sexual orientation. When Paul refers to same sex activity as
“unnatural” he is talking about people we would understand to be heterosexual
participating in same sex activity (Rom 1.26-27). The idea that people have different sexual
orientations would never have occurred to Paul.
Just because Paul was ignorant about sexual orientation is no reason for
Christians to use that ignorance as a basis for condemnation. A strong case can be made, especially in 1
Cor 6.9, that what Paul is condemning is pederasty (men having sex with boys),
which has nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with
exploitation (see also comments about honor below).
Outside of Paul,
the other texts used to condemn same sex activity are Gen 19.1-9, Lev 18.22
& 20.13, and 1 Tim 1.10 (1 Timothy was most likely not written by Paul, it
is pseudo-Pauline). The first thing to note is the infrequency that same sex
activity is mentioned in the Bible. It
is never mentioned by the prophets, the moral compasses of ancient Israel. It is never mentioned either explicitly or
implicitly by Jesus. To this list, the
story of creation (Gen 1-2) is typically added, although any argument
condemning homosexuality from this text can only be made from silence. Just because homosexual relationships are not
mentioned does not mean that they should be condemned. Remaining celibate is not mentioned, yet Paul
believes that to be the ideal (1 Cor 7), although most people would disagree
with Paul. Only by dealing with this
issue from the perspective of an oppressed minority (i.e. from the perspective
of GLBT persons), which would add over 600 verses to the list, could one
consider the issue of homosexuality to be an important issue biblically; an
issue of social justice and equality.
The story of
Sodom and Gomorrah isn’t about sexual relationships. It is a story about rape and abuse (see
Ezekiel 16.49). To take the story of
Sodom as condemning all homosexual relationships would be like saying David’s adultery
with Bathsheba condemns all heterosexual relationships. To try to equate rape with loving committed
homosexual relationships is absolutely ridiculous.
When dealing
with the two texts from Lev. 18.22 and 20.13 one has to ask why male same sex
activity (women aren’t mentioned in these verses) was considered such a serious
offense. While there are a number of
theories, the most likely, is that in a patriarchal society it would have
violated the honor of both partners. In the ancient world the
penetrated male would have dishonored himself by submitting as only a female
would, and the penetrating male would have dishonored himself by dominating his
partner. By dishonoring themselves, these ancient cultures would have seen the two male partners as bringing shame upon all men, but since we no longer
live in an ancient honor bound society one has to question the legitimacy of these
texts for our context.
It should also
be noted that this part of Leviticus is concerned with ritual impurity. While the proscribed penalty is death, it
should also be noted that dishonoring ones parents also warrants death. Yet, we
wouldn’t consider killing a child just because s/he spoke back to his/her
parents. Most us of ignore the
prohibition against wearing clothing made of two fabrics, planting two kind of
seeds in a single field (e.g. sorry, no Round-Up Ready Corn), mixing breeds of
animals etc. (Lev 19.19). We no longer
live in the cultic setting that birthed these texts, so why do we only use Lev.
18.22 and 22.13? The use of this text
has less to do with homosexuality and more to do with homophobia. Instead of trying
to use the Bible to condemn GLBT couples; the church should be one place where
they can experience the fullness of community, without condemnation and
judgment. Not only should GLBT persons
be welcomed into the church, they should also be invited and encouraged to be
pastors, Sunday school teachers, musician and any other leadership role they
feel called to. It is my hope that
someday the church will be able to put aside its prejudice and homophobia and
embrace all people regardless of sexual orientation.
Calling for a new reformation. There are many who are looking for a new reformation to take place. One such call can be heard in this video by Marcus Borg (watch
full program), where he talks about mainline Christians needing to once
again reclaim our heritage, to see Christianity as a way of life rather than a set of beliefs.
