Author: MASadmin

I know I shouldn’t read Andrew Sullivan. I know that I disagree with most of what he writes and, to be honest, his most recent editorial about Christianity is no different. He feels the need to jump on the Jefferson bandwagon and mistake Jefferson’s Americanizing of Jesus as, somehow, anti-political-power. Jefferson’s Jesus is not an exaltation of Jesus but rather a reduction of Jesus into a time specific, American, identity. Jefferson’s legacy, when it comes to Jesus, is to do what America does all the time about Jesus – molding Jesus into what they project onto the Jesus project. Jesus doesn’t break into the world but, rather, Jesus is a product of an idealized, American world.

That’s what really gets me about Sullivan. The argument for a simplified Christianity, a Jesus-focused Christianity, is an old argument. The Reformers of the 16th century pushed for that. The men and women who went into the desert pushed for that. The ancestors to current American Evangelicalism pushed for that. Hell, pietism and my pal Henry Muhlenberg pushed for that. What Sullivan is arguing is a return to what Spener wanted in the 17th century – a visualized, simplified, transformative Christianity that is visibly seen in the church. The true church, then, is the church of Jesus! Simplicity! That’s the key to thing. Even Sullivan’s argument about Francis is all about simplicity. His argument is that Christianity is overload, too political, and too influenced by “worldliness.” Sullivan sounds like many of the young, hipster-esque non-denominational pastors out there but also sounds a lot like those who feel that Jesus wasn’t divine but, rather, a moral teacher. The idea is to strip Christianity back to Jesus – with the assumption that we, unlike the disciples in Mark, get it and we know even better than Peter, John, James, and Paul.

But here’s where Sullivan really blows it and that’s with the statement “As Jesus was without politics, so was Francis.” What? Or how about “When politics is necessary, as it is, the kind of Christianity I am describing seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all.” Or, better yet, let’s make silly arguments and throw out parts of the gospel story by claiming that the patrons in Luke and Paul didn’t exist: “Jesus, like Francis, was a homeless person, as were his closest followers. He possessed nothing‚Äîand thereby everything.” All of this is, in reality, unscriptural. It’s a reduction of the complex reality of the what the scriptures are. It also tries to remove the current church, or argue that the crisis in the church can be resolved by removing itself out of its reality and where it is. By excising true Christianity from the rest of reality, true change can occur, true love can flourish, and we can get everyone to like us. Or something like that.

What Sullivan should be arguing is the question that Christianity has been working out since Constantine converted: how does Christianity work when it is in a position of political power? Because we still HAVEN’T figured that out (though I think Two Kingdom’s theology gets that bit right :p). And it doesn’t matter if its right wing or left wing, social justice oriented or rapture-focused, any Christianity in a position of political power is going to find itself in a dangerous position because of the political reality and visions within the gospel itself. A reduction to just a “Jesus focused” reality won’t change that problem. And we know that won’t work because we’ve been trying to do that for two thousand years. Reducing our actions to just what Jesus did, or taught, or what we believe Jesus did or taught, in many ways, denies Sin. It denies the need for Christ to die. And it reduces faith. Removing complexity from Christianity, Jesus, and God does the opposite of what Sullivan claims he wants to do. It’s not about accepting mystery and burying complexity into the mist of “somewhere else.” It’s actually how we get ourselves off the hook from the troubling parts of scripture, the complexity of canon, and the complexity of our own history and story. And why should we deny that? The Gospel is bigger than our complexity; God is bigger than our own failures; and we should own it, and never, ever, runaway from it.

My friend Jan found my cat’s tag sign on the Lower East Side of Manhattan – that cat gets around!

I know I’ve been avoiding talking about the Trayvon Martin murder in depth. The event was tragic, terrible, and I feel for the all the families of the victim. The amount of videos, press information, and criminal reports I’ve read about the event is staggering compared to how I usually follow events like these. I’m hoping an arrest is made and criminal charges are pressed on Zimmerman and I’m appalled at the blatant racism that has been displayed by many, many people. It’s a reminder, to me at least, of how far this country has yet to go in regards to racial acceptance.

Bishop Hanson’s message was right on target, I think, and I’ve heard that Martin’s death has been on the radar of faithful Christians all over the place. It’s discussion has caused some soul searching, empathy, and it seems to be in the air even if its impact might be minimal in some places. But I would like to share one suggestion to those in the church who would like to discuss this attack (and racial issues) in general: please don’t use the word “become” as in “what has our society become that allows this to happen?” Speaking for myself, that phrase just shuts me down. In that one simple word and thought, what I see is a romanticism of the past, a rejection of all the other cases of racial violence/discrimination that have happened over the years, and a misidentification of the fact that race in the United States is still a big deal. Discrimination is still a big deal. We, collectively, are not moving away from some golden age but, rather, we’re suppose to be on track towards something better. The amazing thing is not that such an event happened but, rather, that there has existed, and continues to exist, a systematic structure in our society’s very being that allows such a thing to happen. If you are speaking of the law and searching for the gospel, if you are trying to tell the church how the world truly is, focusing on that one act isn’t enough. The groundwork that led to such an event is bigger than that and is built into our very bones. That’s sin and that needs to be talked about, and not washed away under some assumed golden age that was in our recent past.

Today’s reading in the lectionary for Holy Week is John 12:1-11. “You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me” Jesus said to the disciples after they complained about Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet. I’ll admit I’ve always struggled with what Jesus said. Even when I exegete it, contextualize the story, and reframe the discussion to argue that what Jesus is commenting on is the lack of faithfulness that the disciples have, I still always return to that phrase “you will always have the poor with you” and shudder. It’s always struck me as an un-hopeful phrase. We will always have the poor with us? Really? We’ll always have the rejected, the unwanted, those who we don’t want to belong? We’ll always have people that we will not invite to our table but that only Jesus will? Always? For all time? Sheesh. What kind of Messiah are you, then? Can’t you just go ahead and take care of it all, wipe the poverty, injustice, fear, from the world, and end the very idea of the poor? I know that the Old Testament told us to let the poor glean but you just marched into Jerusalem with palms and garments thrown on your path – can’t you do MORE?

Today, for me at least, what Jesus tells the disciples is how I’ll frame what the church needs to say about racial injustice in this country. Don’t romanticize the past and claim that the “poor” were never there. Don’t, also, claim that this will be a topic that we’ll ever NOT have to talk about. We don’t, really, live in a post-racial society. We don’t live in a post-class society. We don’t live in a post-gender society. We don’t live in a post-sexuality society. As a church, we need to be honest and keep describing how the world truly is. The world needs to be broken into, changed, and made right. And as we march through this Holy Week, towards the Cross, lets try to keep all of this in mind. We’re not re-enacting the passion story – we’re proclaiming it because it is still needed to be heard today.

Last night, I made my acting debut.

During Lent, my internship site has a midweek service series that involves readings, prayers, and a dramatic presentation. The dramatic pieces were taken from a series of unlikely and hypothetical meetings of characters, and their families, in the passion story of Jesus. The scripts were reworked six years ago (and reworked again for this season) and my supervisor asked me to be involved. For the last service (last night), my wife and I played Pontius Pilate and his wife. It was fun because we got to have a play fight and argue about the nature of Jesus after he was crucified.

Now, I’ll admit that the script was difficult for me to work through mostly because, well, there was quite a bit of imagination infused into this scene that seemed problematic. There was an attempt, in some of the formulation of the script, to actually make Pilate’s wife a secret-Christian and make Pontius Pilate a sympathetic character. And I really really really dislike these ideas. Sure, it’s possible to read that lens into the gospels but just because that can be read into the story does not mean that it is actually life-giving. I really actively fought against this perspective and my wife did too. It’s one thing to identify with Pontinus Pilate and dwell deep with why the gospels depicted him (and his wife) the way they do but it’s quite another thing to romanticize the characters away from their own contexts. We’ve already had that in the Acts of Pilate and I don’t think we need to do that again.

However, I really had a lot of fun doing this. It was stressful worrying about it, seeing it on the calendar, organizing rehearsals, and trying to memorize my lines. I really am bad at memorizing things so I spent quite a bit of time on the subway annoying my fellow riders by reading and moving my mouth at the same time. I didn’t have a costume (though I dressed in a shirt and tie, feeling like I was making a contemporary commentary on our real world) and, at the last minute, I discovered I really like props. The folks in the front row got to witness my use of puns and humor by noticing that I had a file with Jesus’ name on it in the “out box” on my desk. I’m pretty proud of that joke actually.

Afterwards, I was amazed with the reflections that people gave me and I realized that I’d make a terrible actor. It seems that in the other dramatic presentations, there was a change that occurred with at least one of the characters on stage. The character would move from one place to the other. However, in my scene, the characters, at the end, ended up in the same place where they started. People expected Pilate to change but he did not. He thought Jesus was silly and insignificant and that is where he ended up. And that, it many ways, is my own take of who Pilate was. Rather than my embodying the character as it was written, I imposed my own view of the character onto the script and I refused to let him change. He flustered but I changed the script before I changed my view of Pilate. I want Pilate to be a jerk and stay a jerk. I don’t have any need to make him a sympathetic character and I think its problematic to do so. So I made Pilate come off as a jerk even if the script explicitly did not do so. I wouldn’t be a good actor because I would refuse to let the character be as they are written. But I did enjoy pretending to be an actor one for the first time last night.