Whiteness and Forgiveness

If you have been strolling through social media land in the last few days one story in particular has caused a range of responses. And, no I am not talking about Washington. I am talking about the trial of Botham Jean’s killer, Amber Guyger. Guyger shot and killed Jean in his own apartment when she entered his apartment thinking it was her own. She had just finished her shift as Dallas police officer.

To be honest, I did not know the trial was underway. I had heard that prosecutors were taking the unusual step of charging her with murder and that she had been fired from the Dallas police department. I finally caught up when videos of her testimony were showing up on my Facebook feed. The still captures from the video showed her scrunched face, red eyes, and running makeup. I don’t doubt her tears. She should cry for what she did, the life she took. Yet, at the same time, I have learned that America’s addiction to White Supremacy feeds on white tears.

So I wasn’t surprised to read that her defense strategy was self-defense. Nor was I surprised when the judge allowed the jury to consider the Castle Doctrine—that one can legally kill when they are in their own home. These are all standard approaches to the questions of violence by whites charged in the killing of black and brown people. Never mind the fact that Guyger was not in her own home, nor was she on duty, and Jean was sitting in his own living room and not threatening her. The judge also instructed the jury that they could consider the lesser charge of manslaughter.

I was stunned, however, when the jury delivered the verdict earlier this week—Guilty, not of manslaughter, but of the primary charge of murder.

In a seesaw of emotion, I was not surprised to see the sentence of ten years with possibility for parole in five.

Then yesterday a video made the rounds of the Brandt Jean—the victim’s brother—giving his impact statement to the court. Both Twitter and Facebook were filled with the image of Jean hugging Guyger and videos clips of his offer of forgiveness.

Like I said, it was a week of seesaw emotions and reactions.

I quickly noticed two general responses to the images of Jean hugging his brother’s murder. On one hand, there was a group highlighting it as a beautiful sign of the power of forgiveness. And on the other, there were skeptics frustrated by yet another sign of the black people doing the forgiving in the face of a system that continues to devalue the lives of people of color. The first group of responses were from white folk and the second from people of color.

Over the last five years I have been on my own journey of understanding the realities of racism in the US. One of the things I have learned from my friend Dr. Drew Hart is to not trust my gut when encountering issues about race. In other words, my instincts and reactions, while my own, are deeply shaped by the wider culture. And that culture has been built on a racial hierarchy that assumes whiteness is normal, objective, and right. In other words, American culture is built on White Supremacy.

Now, I need to step back to define White Supremacy. That phrase has layers of meaning but the dominant one is that White Supremacy is the ideology of bad people who are explicitly racist and more often than not violent. It conjures up mental images of white hoods, burning cross, and skinheads. However, White Supremacy is also descriptive of the social, political, and economic foundations of our culture. It is the system itself, as all of these areas of our shared life have been built on a race hierarchy that puts whiteness at the top. It has been embedded in American culture from the 15th century, and despite hard won efforts to undo its policies and impact, it persists as it every adapts to any such changes.

One particular result of White Supremacy is the dominant idea of white innocence. That is why I was not surprised to read that the judge allowed the self-defense argument and consideration of the Castle Doctrine. Surely, white people don’t just shoot people for no reason (except for the fact that they do). As Robin Diangelo says in her book White Fragility, we assume that white folk are all individuals and as such exempt from the impacts of socialization, especially socialization by White Supremacy. We assume that white folks start not just from the place of innocence, but that we are objective in our understandings of the world and how we see others.

As part of my learning to not trust my gut, I have prioritized the voices of black and brown people when trying to understand what is happening in the news. In reading through the posts about the hug and offer of forgiveness it was so clear to me that my white and black friends were seeing two very different things. On the one hand, white folks were celebrating such a beautiful act of forgiveness, made so plain not in Jean’s words on the stand, but the hug itself. Most of my white pastor friends immediately fixated on the image saying this is exactly what forgiveness looks like, and is possible through the grace of Jesus Christ. On the other, people of color are offering a much more complex assessment. Some named the beauty of the act while highlighting that it is small in the face of the deep and painful effects of White Supremacy in the wider culture. Some push back hard against white folk lifting up Brandt as an example, and challenging us to see how his action is part of the wide pattern of black people having to extend forgiveness to white people over and over again. And still others named explicitly that the symbol of his forgiveness assuages our own white fragility, granting a kind of absolution to our own discomfort with matters of race and the violence of race hierarchies.

So what are white people to do? How should we understand this case, and all its emotional waves?

1. Seek out people of color to hear their interpretation. Meet them for lunch or coffee and listen. Don’t argue and don’t present another narrative. Just listen. Find black and brown people on social media and read their wise words. Don’t reply. Just soak it in. Don’t stop when you find a person of color who articulates what you already think.
2. Ask yourself what you are missing. Why do you see this case and Jean’s action so differently from others?
3. Notice your own reactions, not just to the story itself, but to the insights of people of color. Why are you defensive? Why are you so drawn to the hug and its implied forgiveness?
4. Pray. Sure, pray for the Jean family. Pray for Guyger. But pray for yourself, that you might see things differently. Pray that you won’t just see these examples of White Supremacy in our culture through white eyes.
5. Lastly, assess your own understanding of forgiveness. What does forgiveness mean? How can this symbol and story be both a weapon and an invitation?
6. If you are a white pastor and preaching this Sunday, highlight black and brown voices. Hold space, especially in dominantly white congregations, to truly hear the complexity and struggle of people of color to interpret these events in ways that lead to radical change. Extend the invitation to true repentance and not just cheap grace.

As white people we must begin to see how we expect black and brown people to forgive so easily. We have to acknowledge that our expectations of forgiveness—even framed theologically through the atonement in Jesus Christ—force people of color to do what they may not be able to do, or ready to do. We have to see that a hug and words of forgiveness are not the end goal. Rather, forgiveness in Christian theology is the catalyst for repentance, a literal change of life. This act cannot remain a symbol, something that lets us leave grace in the land of the cheap and easy way out. See that this bit of grace demands a different way of living in this world, not just for Guyger, but for all of us. And we must reassess our theology of forgiveness, understanding that, as Dr. Drew Hart said today on Twitter, forgiveness is not reconciliation. It may indeed invite the longer, and more difficult, work of reconciling white and black people, but in itself the act of forgiveness is not the result but the catalyst. And lastly, that we as white people must submit ourselves to the leadership of people of color. Otherwise, Jean’s prophetic action does nothing to change the current of White Supremacy around us.

Those Who Disciple

In one of my first classes of seminary we were given a note card and asked to put down the names of two or three people who have been key in our faith life. It wasn’t a hard task, except for narrowing it down to just a few. The top three names were people in my home congregation that had shown grace, joy, wisdom, and a deep life of faith.

One was a mentor who had taught me to put a roof on a house by giving me a summer job. Yet, it wasn’t just a job. He took the wages he earned on each roof and put it toward a scholarship fund at the church.

Another was a deacon in the congregation who showed amazing self-knowledge, and demonstrated what service meant in so many ways.

The other was a woman who noticed how restless I was one Sunday. After church she asked if I wanted to learn how to light the Christ candle. Every kid in that church went to her for a big bear hug after worship every Sunday. She included me in church, and she showed us all how to be loving and joyful in everything.

The first two men on my list passed away almost twenty years ago. And I learned today that the joyful woman, so ready to embrace everyone, passed away last night.

All the people I named in that seminary class have now passed. And it gives me pause.

Have I lived up to the gifts they gave me so long ago?

Am I passing on those gifts?

My ministry now focuses on discipleship. So I often talk about the process of following Jesus. Yet, that is really only half the equation. The Christian life, while ultimately aimed at following Jesus, involves generations of followers before us. Though I read about who Jesus was and what Jesus taught in the scriptures, it is those around me who have taught me what it actually looks like to follow the Jesus of the Bible. Put another way, being a disciple of Jesus means being discipled by someone else.

For me there a many of those disciplers I should include on my list. Some have passed, and some I see only so often. Yet, each one has in some way reflected a part of Jesus in the flesh.

In these persons I have seen Jesus’ generosity, compassion, joy, and selflessness.

In others I have come to value deep study, love of the church, the beauty of ministry, and the centrality of prayer.

Today I mourn that some of these reflections of Jesus are no longer shining among us. And I feel a the weight of knowing that those of us who have been discipled by them have a great responsibility to mirror a bit more of Jesus in their absence.

I am grateful for the gifts they have given me, for I simply would not be the disciple of Jesus I am today without them.

Godspeed Naomi Robenstine. I patiently wait the resurrection, when I will once again cherish your hug.

Bye Bye Christendom

I have tried to avoid much commentary on the presidential election. Quite frankly a lot is being said, and some of it quite good. There is, however, one thing hanging on the tip of my tongue after a week.

I hope this is the last nail in the coffin for American Christendom.

I believe that religious leaders who openly supported a candidate finally drove that nail home. Neither candidate presented a campaign that aligned with any tradition I know of. Trump’s obvious disdain for immigrants, women, the disabled, and blacks, let alone his serial philandering should have been enough. But Clinton had her own problems. I didn’t once hear my progressive peace church friends call out her hawkish approach to international affairs nor her neo-liberal economic policies that created much of the income disparity we see today. (To be fair, I have rarely heard those critiques of Obama who has deported more immigrants than any other president and has turned drone warfare into the newest tool in American Imperialism.) Instead, our religious leaders stepped up behind the nominee of both parties ignoring such glaring inconsistencies. In a way, American Christianity has finally become more identified with the Democratic and Republican parties than it has with the teachings of Jesus. And in so doing, the church has fallen lock step in line with the vision of the American Experiment. It has given up its social vision for humanity to the political mechanisms set in place over two hundred years ago.

After the great wars in Europe, sparked by the fissures of the Reformation, the Founding Fathers sought a path for the new nation that would shift the church from its once significant place in social unity. Having witnessed horrific violence in the name of religion, the early American leadership turned to the new theories of social contract, put forth by Enlightenment philosophers, to design a government that would mediate between the differences naturally a part of every human community. Before the Constitution, religion was literally the binding practices for any society. And in Christendom Europe this was even more the case, such that as new forms of Christianity began to slip the singular bond of the Roman church, violence erupted. Princes and clergy aligned, later in what was called the Peace of Westphalia, to secure local sovereignty. So when the Founding Fathers set to form a new experiment, they did so intentionally breaking the link between Church and governance.

Fast forward two hundred years and the mediating role of the Church in society was nearly replaced by the government. Instead of presenting a holistic social vision based on the teachings of Jesus, the church gave over much of the binding work of a mediating institution to the government. However, in the late twentieth century, particularly with the Eisenhower presidency, politicians began to court religious leaders to legitimize the usurping
role of the government. By the start of the twenty-first century blocks of Christianity were solidly within the camps of one political party or another. Pollsters and politicians alike began categorizing voting blocks, like the evangelical parts of the church, as solely beholden to one party.

Now, in this election these voting blocks followed through with their quest to find their views legitimized by the only mediating institution left in the country. And they did so proclaiming the betrayal of their values by their deafening silence about the inconsistencies in their own candidate.

It is my hope and prayer that in the postmortem review of the 2016 election that Christian leaders will finally see their own duplicity in the quest to keep their party in power. And in so doing, we all will see that the politicians who count on us to vote in particular blocks do so only feigning moral clarity, and are just as interested in political power over others.

When we finally see that, we will come to terms with the glaring contradiction to the example of Christ himself, who sought not power over others but a kind of power that willingly took the servants towel.

It is my prayer, then, that the American Church will finally stop seeking legitimacy from the political process, cease trying to enforce a moral vision for the country through political power, and return to being the church. We will reach out to the marginalized, refusing the racist and classist hierarchy of American culture. We will care for the immigrants as scripture commands regarding the stranger in the land, rejecting the fear mongering of politicians and pundits. We will care for our neighbors, even those most different from us, contrary to the elitism of our capitalist economy that teaches us to see them as people to be out done or threats to our economic security. We will open our homes, share our wealth, and protect the most vulnerbale in the compassionate spirit of Christ, contrary to the divisive nature of our political structures. And we will do all of this, not because we want to enforce a kind of moral vision on the country, but because it is simply our civic duty not as Americans, but as citizens of heaven.

So if you are relieved by outcome of the election, or if you are disheartened, take a moment to consider how your own values were compromised in the casting of your vote. Consider how politicians have co-opted the church for their own gain. And consider how the church has increasingly become irrelevant to an entire generation of young people who see right through the power games and recognize that the church has become just as obsessed with power over others as the worst of politicians. And then, consider how we might all return to the valuable mission of God in the world, where all peoples are made one again in the only true mediating presence of Jesus. And finally, may we let go of Christendom and return to being the church.

A Rule of Life?

I recently ran across a devotional/planning calendar called Sacred Ordinary Days. There are a lot of these kinds of planners on the market, but what I was immediately attracted to was that this calendar/tool is based on the liturgical year. It’s a big book, to be honest, and has pages for months, weeks, and days. On the weekly pages it lists the Revised Common Lectionary readings and on the daily pages it lists the Book of Common Prayer readings for Daily Prayer. Though I often work with scripture, I was drawn back to the idea that I would be reading texts with others and it would not just be limited to the scriptures I am working with. (If you want to check it out, go to http://www.sacredordinarydays.com)

In the opening pages the calendar designer invites the user to create a Rule of Life. This is not a new idea. In fact, spiritual directors often coach their directees to do something very similar. More than that, religious communities have often created a rule for their life together.

At our recent Annual Conference for the Church of the Brethren, I realized just how much we expect structures and beliefs to hold us together. In church-y language, we expect polity and policy to hold us together as a denomination. But even the most casual of observers would tell you, polity is often not strong enough to hold such a diverse community together. This is, in part, due to the fact that we as a denomination have very little common practice. The lowest common denominator is that we gather for worship on Sunday mornings. And yet, even then the practices of worship vary so much from congregation to congregation that we cannot even find touch points for our common life.

So I began wondering what a Rule of Life would look like for the Brethren. Could we construct a set of common practices that would ground a geographically dispersed people that spans several cultural and theological communities?

In the not so distant past it has been asserted that we need a set of core values or beliefs to keep us together. However, this idea often runs into two major problems. First, many see such a doctrinal core as too creedal. For a non-creedal tradition such a distillation of beliefs is often too divisive to do much good. Second, such an approach ignores the simple fact that values and beliefs emerge out of habits that themselves emerge from regular practice.

In the early centuries of the Middle Ages, Benedict of Nursia understood this beliefs from habits aspect of the Christian life. He composed a Rule for his community that established clear practices that were intended to form a certain kind of person. Of course, in the process he also interpreted these practices so that the monks who followed the Rule could understand what was intended– humility, stability, and prayer. Soon after, Pope Gregory understood the unifying effect of Benedict’s Rule and established it as the Rule for the western monks. It became the common practices of monasteries across Europe. And not long after that, monks formed by the shared life established by the Rule took on key leadership and began reforming the church structures. To this day, several monastic communities follow the Rule, and have found in it’s classical wisdom an impulse for renewal.

So, can we imagine a common Rule of Life for this people called the Brethren?

Here are a couple of key practices I have begun to sketch out.

1) Grounded in Scripture– those who submit to this Rule covenant to engage in a daily and weekly rhythm of studying and praying the scriptures. While many do this as part of their devotional practice, followers of the Rule would commit to study the texts outlined in the Revised Common Lectionary. What is more, they commit to praying the scriptures outlined in the Book of Common Prayer for Daily prayer.

2) Rooted in Worship- Followers of the Rule commit to regular participation in worship with a congregation. Two parts of this are key. First, it is to be a practice of corporate worship, and not something one does individually. Second, while the practices of worship may vary, the common thread between all these communities will be the use of the Revised Common Lectionary. Here, the wider church will be reading the same scriptures regardless of where the congregations are rooted. What is more, followers of the Rule will have been reading these same texts throughout the week, and will find a common, public proclamation of scriptures they have been reading privately during the week.

3) Reaching the surrounding community- Followers of the Rule will find or make regular opportunities to minister in their local community. Such practices of service are easy to find through other community organizations, but the key is to participate monthly, if not weekly. I would want to see this involve others, even if they are not practitioners of the Rule. For compassion and service are things not done well in isolation.

4) Shared meals- Followers of the Rule will have monthly common meals with others. These are not just social gatherings, but an intentional practice of sharing– sharing food, sharing prayers, and accountability. Key questions should emerge in the practice of sharing a meal in this manner, questions Brethren long ago asked one another before the Lord’s Supper or Love Feast. “How are you with God? How are you in love and community with your sisters and brothers?” We should include also a question about how or if people are keeping with the Rule.

This is by no means a fixed assertion, but a making public my own desire to find a Rule of Life. But at the same time, I do not want such a Rule to be something of my own creation. I am too Anabaptist to assume that others do not have something to offer or challenge.

So what say ye?

Our Moral Calculus

I have been thinking a lot about privilege, race, economics, and our culture. Some of my thoughts emerge when I catch up on the news, and others come as I read the important work by others more intelligent that I.

However, the news of the recent sentencing of a young white man for the sexual assault of a young woman was the final straw. The conviction carried the minimum sentence of 2-3 years, but the judge gave him six months in the county jail. While I am sure that any time in jail is enough for any person to see the violence of their actions, in this case the rape of a woman, it is all too plain that as a young white college man he was given the benefit of the doubt. And as has been all too plain, that same benefit is not awarded women, blacks, latinos, or sexual minorities.

The struggle for equality in our time is one that in some ways builds on the advances for minorities in the last century while at the same time eclipsing those achievments. For instance, it is all too common to hear a white man say plainly “I am not racist.” Such a statement is probably true (though even saying as much is a recognition that racism is implied), but that very self-perception is based on the idea that racists are easy to identify– or that they participate in explicit and personal actions of hate based on race. Today, however, we are confronted by the myriad of ways racism, misogyny, and fear of sexual minorities is shaped in us by cultural practices that work below our subconscious.

Compare one of the young black men shot on the street by police. Their communities try to rehumanize these young men, saying just what the dad of the young white rapist did– namely that they are good kids, who made a poor decision. White pundits often discredit such stories by saying that the young men were on drugs, but in the case of the white man who was intoxicated it was just a youthful indiscretion. Just because the rapist is a white college student, he looks like he has so much potential. And even the minimum sentence took into account his lack of a criminal record, but still treated the severity of the crime. Because he was white and looked to have potential, he was granted a dramatically lenient six months.

For all of us white men, who are “not racist” or not prone to misogyny, or “not homophobic” we finally have to realize just how much leeway we are granted simply because of our skin color and gender. Not only are we innocent until proven guilty (a luxury many blacks, latinos, LGBT persons are granted in name only), but we are even given the future benefit of the doubt when we are indeed guilty.

We must come to terms, as a society, that we in fact do make a moral calculus that is based on race, gender, and sexual identity. And that calculus, as Drew Hart has named it, is a hierarchical one. White men on top, and the rest fall out somewhere below.

When we employ this calculus, we overlook that sexual predators are more likely to be white straight men preying on children in church than they are transgendered persons lurking in bathrooms. We conveniently omit the fact that the so-called black-on-black crime rates are statistically the same as white-on-white crime. And because white men have such potential in our culture, the accounts of women who have been sexually assaulted are attempts to falsely discredit men until a jury finds enough proof to the contrary. And even then, as we have seen this week, even the testimony of the victim, bravely read in court at the sentencing, is not enough to actually enforce the law.

This hierarchical moral calculus, despite our overt assertions to the contrary, instills in us a subconscious story that allows these things to continue. And while we may not be racists, we allow these cultural factors to cloud our judgment, and the same is true in regards to women and many others.

This, to me, seems the heart of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7. Many today latch onto Jesus’ words about judging others, but the remainder of the passage are striking. If we are ready to point out the sins of another, the speck of dust in their eye, we must first remove the plank in our own. For those of us who have significant cultural privilege, that plank in our eye is huge. And we have grown so accustomed to seeing the world in those terms, adjusting our perceptions to account for our skewed and fallen vision of the world, we barely notice just how privileged we are. And truthfully, it may not be out of our own doing. As the classical tradition regarding the Fall says so plainly, when humanity sinned against God it did not just affect individuals, it was cosmological. The ramifications of our separation from God are not our personal doing, but are true nonetheless. Sanctification, becoming like Jesus, is the one remedy and it takes work. And at times, like the camel passing through the eye of a needle, is a painful struggle. But just because it is painful does not mean we should cower in the face of significant transformations.

We must change.

The Church is Dead, Long Live the Church

The church is dead. Or at least every marker we would hold up as a sign of life is in decline. Membership is down across the board, and worship attendance is but of fraction of what it once was. Budgets are in decline as congregations and denominations struggle to find ways to support their ministries and leaders.

On top of that, nearly every denomination is fighting within itself. Leaders and laity a like are asking not “if we split” but talking about “when we split.”

Of course, this is not news. Even if saying it so bluntly causes you to gasp, we have known that the church is dead for some time, and known it deep in our bones. Each year the anxiety builds towards budgeting season, and every pastoral transition brings a whole new season of “visioning.” Lay leaders are hard to come by, and those who do say “yes” seem to be the same ones year in and year out. Words like change, relevance, adaptation, and even mission fill board minutes and sermon manuscripts in nearly every congregation. When sociological research confirms again and again that the US is growing less religious each year, church leaders scramble to find new and attractive ways to stem the tides.

Denominational statistics confirm what many know from social research, namely that our members are aging. Membership numbers across the board are in decline, and have been for some time. Of course the subsequent financial decline is following. Congregations are often faced with mounting costs— property, utilities, and staff salaries—and must choose between keeping the lights on or keeping the pastor at full time or continuing important ministries and allocations. Institutional systems constructed with financial windfalls fueled by the baby boom and peak numbers of church attendance now find themselves struggling to maintain staff, program, and property. In the last decade nearly every mainline denomination has undergone significant restructuring in order to responsibly meet the new financial realities.

All the while church leaders, both evangelical and mainline, seem flustered by the emerging realities, especially the growing marginalization of the church in general. The new normal is a constant state of anxious panic.

In cultures governed by monarchies every change of leadership was a microcosm of panic. Each time a king or queen died, there was a moment of possible anarchy as the power changed hands. Lodging the succession of the crown in family lineages was one way to keep that window of transition as small as possible. A phrase quickly emerged to help the people stem the moment of anxiety. When the monarch died, it would be proclaimed around the realm “the king is dead, long live the king.” Though there were sure to be changes as a result of the transition, the lines of continuity were well in place. The people need not panic, or act from their anxiety.

To be honest, we have very little that assures us as the church of any continuity. The modern structures of church life like denominations, congregations, and even church buildings no longer provide us with the sense of security and continuity they once did. More simply, the ways of “being church” are dead or dying.

So we panic. We act from our anxiety, as if the future of the faith depends on our ability to shore things up, or change things to meet the times.

The church is dead, long live the church. That is now my new motto. As a historian I can point to any age and name the ways the church was different from the age before. And yet, when I step back and look at the longer trajectory of history, the church continued on. That was, for instance, the brilliance of the Reformation. Amidst the dramatic cultural, political, economic, and religious change, leaders like Luther were able to root the continuity of the faith through the scriptures. While everything around them was in turmoil, there was at least one line that could be drawn back in time to the first Christians. As the religious loyalties of the princes shifted, and thus the official religion of the territory changed with him, the people could still find their roots of the faith in the scripture.

I am finding myself asking not “what needs to change” but rather “what keeps us rooted in the long history of the church.” In other words— The church is dead, long live the church.

War and the Stories We Tell

I would rather call it Armistice Day, truth be told. I’ve got nothing against veterans. I simply want us to celebrate the coming of peace, even through the horrors of war, rather than celebrate the fighting. I wonder if we called it Armistice Day our “thank you” to vets and troops might not sound so hollow and trite. I wonder if we as civilians might have a better sense of what these men and women have done, what the nation has asked them to do, and what it all has done to them. Today we have heard the stories of vets today, and some have even told the lesser known stories of Conscientious Objectors.

I have been an objector to war for about as long as I have had to think about it. I am a child of the first Gulf War. I can remember the press conferences shown on school televisions where the generals commented on the videos of smart bombs crashing into buildings and bridges. “Here you are about to see the luckiest guy in Iraq,” one general said as a car moved across a bridge that was dust seconds later. I even found myself in debates about the merits of war and the Christian response on the bus rides home.

We are told that today’s army is a professional one. My father’s generation is the last one to see a true draft. Since then all our combat has been carried on the shoulders of those who supposedly choose to fight. Even when I signed up for selective service there was no place to signal my objection to war, no box to check, no line on which I could make my case. Yet I signed up anyway, putting the letters CO in the upper corner in the unlikely event of a draft. It was meaningless really. Two letters out of place would not really signal anything if my number did come up. I know of others who refused to sign up altogether. I calculated the risk, thinking a draft would never come in my lifetime. And so far, several wars later, my calculations have proven true.

And yet, I just spent my late nights writing the story of a soldier. My wife’s grandfather served as in a tank destroyer battalion as a gunner in the last years of World War II. He crossed into France less than six months after the horrific battles of D-Day, and joined the push east towards Berlin. He witnessed the V-2 rockets pulse overhead, saw the trees shatter in the snowy Hurtgen Forest during the Battle of the Buldge, endured shelling and hid from snipers, and even met the Russians as they neared Berlin. After peace came to Europe he stood guard over German Prisoners of War on their way to Nuremberg.

I poured over After Action Reports that calculated the progress of war in map coordinates, shells fired, and the nameless tallies of the wounded. I read unit histories that recounted the decisions of combat and the movement of troops. And I learned the names of the young men of his unit awarded stars for valor and of men killed. Honestly, I tried to tell a war story as a labor of love. I wanted to find out what this gentle and loving man experienced as a soldier in the second great war. And I wanted to do it as an objector.

When I talked to Fritz and asked about his military days I never sensed a spark of pride. It was simply what he did. He seemed never to want thanks or praise. He had fired that large gun on the destroyer, and seen his friends wounded. His story never seemed to be one of glory, just truth. Even the few hand written pages of his service are matter of fact, no details beyond the dates and places. I told a similar story, as a historian, without judgement so that those of us who love him as a milk truck driver, loving father and grandfather, might not lose his story to the passing of time and his memory.

In his book “The Things they Carried,” Vietnam veteran Tim O”Brien says that “in a true war story, if there’s a moral at all, it’s like the thread that makes a cloth. You can’t tease it out. You can’t extract the meaning without unraveling the deeper meaning. And in the end, really, there’s nothing much to say about a true war story, expect maybe ‘Oh.’” (84)

That is how I feel after hearing the war stories of Fritz and the Conscientious Objectors. It is true, I can only say “Oh.” For many on either side of the decision to fight these stories are a rally cry. Through their celebratory moralizing these story tellers try to stir in their hearing a similar passion, for either peace or war. I find no such moral in either story. In fact, I mourn either kind. For there are many whose conscience knows no choice. Some men fought and some others served in other ways. Neither seem to have had the same luxury of choice as I did when I wrote those two simple letters on my selective service card. They did what they thought they had to do when nations fought nations. I don’t know if Fritz would have chosen otherwise had he known the stories of war objectors, just as I don’t know if those objectors would have chosen otherwise if they hadn’t heard of other options. Yet I am not sure if they really had a choice to begin with. All they could do was follow their conscience and pray they came out on the other side when the fighting stopped.

Today, we appear to have a choice. Some serve in other ways while others join up. Yet, it seems that there are still no options. Nations still war against nations, and the threats to life and prosperity still remain. And in it all fear runs deep.

I have three sons who I pray will choose not fight, even when there seems no other option. I pray they too will write those two meaningless letters on their selective service registration. Yet I want them to hear the stories of both kinds of heroes that had no choice— those who objected to fighting and those who fought. For in hearing the moral-less stories of war and alternative service, I want them to choose to conquer with love, and the towel that dries feet, rather than sword. I want them to build rather than destroy. And yet, I know they have no real choice. I want them to ask for another story.

Discipleship in the Empire

There are times when the questions of someone else linger like the sweet taste of honey. These are the kinds of questions that you savor, and long for the answer but know deep down that the answer will never be quite as satisfying as the question itself.

My sister in faith Dana Cassell asked me one such question over lunch. “How do we live faithfully in the midst of Empire?” As soon as the point of the question mark lifted her intonation, I knew it was that kind of query. And it was one I knew that any thoughts would pale in comparison to the penetrating insight the question itself revealed. It was the question of first Christians as the Apostles spread throughout Rome. It was the question Hippolytus tried to articulate in his list of jobs a new Christian must renounce before baptism. And it was the question that drove the likes of Augustine and Chyrsostom to preach against attending the “spectacles” in the colosseums and theaters of the day. And though each one offered a short answer, it is in the question itself that we find the heart of our discipleship. So long as we can finally dig beneath the answers themselves to articulate the question itself. And like so many other times, Dana put words to the sweetness of the quest.

So I only attempt an answer with fear and trembling, and hopefully not gnashing of teeth.

In his book “The Way of the Heart” Henri Nouwen presented a captivating description of the desert in the spiritual life. In the desert, the monks sought a solitude that would transform them. This furnace, Nouwen said, refined them by melting off the bits of illusion that ran deep in their souls. Though we might think of the ascetic project as relative late comer into the history of the church, Nouwen pointed to Jesus’s journey in the desert. With forty days alone in the wilderness, Jesus confronted the temptations we all face, temptations that are precisely what Empire wants us to pursue.

Here is Nouwen’s account of the temptations:
“Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant (‘turn stones into loaves’), to be spectacular (‘throw yourself down’), and to be powerful (‘I will give all these kingdoms’). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity (‘You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone’). Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter— the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.” 25-26

The stories of Jesus’ temptation were foundational for the growth of early Christian asceticism. By withdrawing to the desert wilderness, Jesus prefigured the necessary withdraw from the confines of Constantinian Rome, from the Empire. The wilderness, it was said, was the place where the demons could be confronted face to face. It was their domain, just as Satan confronted Jesus while he fasted and prayed.

As Christianity grew in social privilege and became increasingly intertwined with the Empire, throngs of people fled to the desert. There were those who sought to follow the example of Jesus, and those who came just to see how these spiritual athletes fared in the wilderness. Those spiritual athletes embodied a detachment that seemed admirable to many, all except those who found new power and influence in the relationship between church and empire.

However, the mythology of the desert hermits reveal that the retreat into the wilderness solitude was no easy feat. There are paintings and icons that depict the first monk Antony wrestling with demons who pulled his hair and beard, his body often in postures reminiscent of the cross. As Nouwen says, it was like a furnace that sped up transformation.

There in the desert, alone without the distractions of “normal” life, the monks confronted the illusions the Empire sought so hard to maintain. The same is true for us, though we clearly don’t see the struggle with solitude as a battle with demons. When we finally pull away from the drone of images and stories from our culture, we are left to hear the inner monolog— all the stories we have internalized both about ourselves and the world around us. Those tapes in our head are there all the time, it is just that in solitude there is nothing to distract us.

I remember my first day of solitude retreat. Honestly I kind of fumbled around. I took a nap for a couple of hours, and I walked around the grounds of the retreat house. But that only took up like two and half hours. There was a whole day yet. So I sifted through the book case, stared at the crack in the wall, and only fueled what I could only describe as boredom. There was nothing to do… no email to answer, no tv shows to catch up on, no commercials to make fun of, and no one to talk too. I honestly spent most of my time that day trying to avoid any kind of self-reflection. I simply did not want to do the work of solitude.

We are culturally shaped to avoid that kind of work. Marketers and TV execs do their best to keep us distracted. In fact, they work to make sure that we think and behave in ways that support the political economy of the society. That means keeping people from asking the tough questions. And they try to make sure we have a common understanding of what is good and right. Our flourishing, they tell us is tied to a thriving economy of goods and services, and the power and prestige of the state.

Even when they hold up the lives of significant men and women, they do so in ways that make them seem almost super human— they were powerful, relevant, and spectacular. They were able to meet the needs of the time, with insightful action, and do it in ways that captured the attention of everyone around them. And the spin doctors do their best to hold them up as icons of our time while trying to not make them too inspiring so that people don’t get the hair brained idea that too much needs to change around us. In order to be important people, we need to seek power and influence, and most of all be charismatic.

As Matthew tells us in the scriptures, this is nothing new. Even Jesus confronted that image of the charismatic and powerful leader. Or, in more theological terms, he too was tempted by the false stories about power, prestige, and relevance. As Thomas Merton has said, these were the stories of the false self— that self-understanding that is fueled by the needs and desires of the Empire. However, in facing these temptations head on, Jesus also reveals to us a way to hear the story, not from the perspective of the Empire, but from the wisdom of God. At each point, he rebuffed the false temptations with the words of scripture. He was not, then, alone in his solitude, left to face the temptations without another story.

The desert monk Evagrius of Pontus wrote an entire collection of sayings that followed the model of Jesus’ confrontation with Satan. In a small tract aptly titled “Talking Back” Evagrius offered the monks battling the stories of the Empire in solitude a list of scriptures that could be recited to rebuff their own temptations. Like Jesus, if they found themselves battling the temptations of particular demons, the monks could recite the promises and truths of scripture. As he says in the open of the book, “In the time of struggle , when the demons make war against us and hurl their arrows at us, let us answer them from the Holy Scriptures, lest the unclean thoughts persist in us, enslave the soul through the sin of actual deeds, and so defile it and plunge it into the death brought by sin.” (49)

This kind of instrumental approach to scripture, using small verses apart from their context, flies in the face of all the interpretive values we have learned in Sunday School. What is more, the idea that we combat demons contradicts our modern understanding of the world. So it is no wonder that many readers of Evagrius psychologize his system. By recalling the scriptures to mind in the moments of angst in solitude, the monk re-ordered his mind. The words of the Bible countered those tapes in their head that celebrate power, vice, and prestige. In the moment of distraction and temptation, the holy scriptures were a kind of detox from the false images of the self the empire banked on.

In solitude, accompanied by the scriptures themselves, we find a new way through the loop holes of Empire. How do we live in Empire, as disciples of Jesus? We follow his example. We make time for retreats into solitude, and confront our false selves with the words of scripture. This isn’t an easy answer to the beautifully sweet question Dana asked a few weeks ago. It isn’t even a complete answer. However, in our work around the denomination, it is one that pulls us from temptations to be powerful, relevant, and spectacular. For in rejecting these temptations with the holy words of scripture, we too might be attended to by the angels.

Domesticated Ritual

Any one who talks theology with me, or just skims this blog, probably already knows this: I like ritual and liturgy. Whether it is the rich practice of the Brethren Love Feast or a simple celebration of the Eucharist, I like me some ritual.

Yet, despite the beauty and significance of Love Feast for the Brethren, it seems we are about as anti-ritual as we are anti-intellectual. That is, we don’t like too much formability or structure. Never mind the fact that a collection of bulletins from any congregation will show just how much we are set in our ways.

Such antipathy to ritual comes in many forms— It is too formal, not enough room for the Spirit; Ritual reinforces a hierarchy foreign to our priesthood of all theology; Too much pomp for our commitment to simplicity; Too much like what Catholics do, and we don’t do sacramentalism.

Brethren come from a long line of radical traditions that, among other things, rejected clericalism and sacramentalism. It is this latter rejection that quickly surfaces in any conversation about the rites and ordinances of the church. We steer clear of any theology or practice that implies something is actually happening when we break and share bread, or when we stoop to wash feet. In good Kantian terms, we simply do our duty in obeying what Christ told us to do. So we often feel most at home in theologies of communion that lean heavy on the memorial aspects of the practice. We follow Zwingli who emphasized not the presence of Christ in the Eucharist but the “remembering” of the event.

With such an emphasis on memorialism we do two things. First, we argue for a thin understanding of a symbol. It is all “just symbolic”— it only points to an idea we hold in our head. Second, because it is symbolic, it must have a limited range of meaning and so we dare not do it too often for fear of the rite losing its meaningfulness. There is a limited range of what can be thought of, so repetition somehow erodes the significance.

To be blunt, I think this is all hogwash. First of all, while the rites of communion or feet washing are symbols, they are thick symbols. They involve our whole body in ways that typical symbols do not. We literally sense the meaning of what we are doing, way below the conscious level of remembering. We feel the implications of what we do on our tongues and with our feet. And when we put these feelings along side the scriptures, our prayers, and songs a whole range of meaning opens up before us. This is what liturgical theologian Gordon Lathrop calls juxtaposition. When texts, materiel things, musical notes, and body movements come together meaning erupts.

Second, we tame this eruption of meaning with heavy-handed explanations of what we are doing. We tell the congregation that the bread and juice are “just symbols” of Christ’s sacrifice and love. We over determine the act of washing feet by saying it is symbol of service. To be fair, all liturgies and rites have moments in which we describe or interpret what is being done. However, when we have an anemic theology of symbols, we domesticate the action by limiting their meaning.

I remember a class on the Eucharist in seminary in which we were required to read several sermons by Augustine. I was amazed at the meanings he could elicit without sounding like he was determining exactly what the Eucharist meant. It hit home for me when in one sermon he could say Christ is present in the bread and wine and in the very next sermon he could sound very Brethren and say that Christ is present in the congregation of believers who call on his name. Both are true, and yet one statement does not contradict the other.

To be honest, our fear of all things ritual leads us to a place where we domesticate the rites of the church. When we over-determine the meaning of course we would shy away from regular and repeated practice. The meaning is exhausted as soon as we confine what is possible. And the only resort of such a thin conception of meaning is to rely on “meaningfulness,” that inner emotional response to the moment. And when the newness of that emotion wares off, we are left with an over-determined symbol and a nostalgia for the past. However, when we let the texts, songs, and postures play in the field of juxtaposition, highlighting the range of possibilities, the rite comes alive. It reorients our vision of the world and ourselves. It brings new perspective to the things happening around us at this very minute and draws us paradoxically from remembering to the present.

It was Annie Dillard who said that if we had any idea of the power we invoke when we gather for worship we would bring hard hats to church. Unfortunately, it seems we don’t actually believe in that same power, or at least we are afraid of it. We determine and confine the meanings of our rituals, and spread them far a part in time so that we might remain comfortably stagnant in the past, and domesticate the very wild idea that God will meet us in the present and set us on new paths, opening new possibilities with these ancient practices.

Failure is Always an Option

I love Mythbusters. Of course the big explosions, ridiculous set ups, and humor go a long way, but it is more how they deal with failure that stands out to me. Adam Savage has a line he almost always repeats that plays on the famous words of NASA’s Gene Krantz— “Failure is always and option.” Or, in more scientific language, an experiment always produces a result. It may not be the result we expect, but it is a result nonetheless. 

That is how science works. Propose a hypothesis, test it, and learn from the results. Then, adjust the hypothesis and try again.