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Humbled Christians

HUMBLED CHRISTIANS
Notes from Bill Bruce at www.kewbeachunitedchurch.com
Sunday, October 22, 2006

Texts: Job 38:1-7, Mark 10:35-45

Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you…
Grant us to sit, one at your right hand, and one at your left, in glory.

Jon Dominic Crossan says the nature of your God is the key to the shape of your faith and practice. If you imagine an all powerful patron God, you want a good place in the hierarchy! Professor Marilyn Legge says there are three taboo subjects in church; sex, money, and power. This week’s notes echo what I said about power this Sunday, while folks here reflected along.

You don’t know what you’re asking, says Jesus.
Can you drink the cup I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?
Oh, yeah, sure we can! No problem! James and John blithely respond
Ruefully, Jesus responds: You will…

We are humbled Christians. Toronto the Good, the city of churches, has changed around us. WASP Toronto, where we were the dominant religious franchise for a majority, has changed. Our built form still imposes itself in old parts of town, but within, we are humbled – and as the hoardings go up on Bellefair, or as our boiler is weeks late firing up, the humiliation goes public. God’s chosen people? God’s frozen people, we were called as a proud uptight ruling class. These days, I’m reminded of Gary Larsen’s Far Side cartoon of polar bears snacking on igloos: ‘I love these things, hard and crunchy on the outside, sweet and soft and gooey on the inside!’

We are humbled Christians. Our United Church membership numbers in Toronto are the same as in 1925 - but the city is ten times bigger. There are more Sikhs than Presbyterians here now, more Muslims than United Church members. Public or separate schools meant ‘protestant’ or ‘catholic’. Now, independent and fee paying schools are proliferating, and the specialization of some public schools and ‘residualization’ of others leave them confusedly trying a liberal approach of ‘education for common citizenship’, often staffed by WASP alumni ill equipped for the new and emergent relationships of power among religious, ethnic and class groups in town.

We are humbled Christians. Much of it is beyond our choice to be anything else, and we know it. The drive to return to the good old days is sputtering: if only young people today would return, or if only we had decent preachers and pastors, we’d dominate politics and business again? What would your commonwealth look like compared to your current city? Would it be characterized by a Protestant ‘worth ethic’ of thrift and restraint, or ruled by a Methodist Mafia, or softened by Presbyterian Social Uplifters? Would water remain in the public commons, and not be commodified, as our denomination argues? Shall we extend that utopia to include land, which was the last commons to be closed? Should we nationalize all ‘means of production’?

We’re working on our identity as Christians, placing ourselves as moral agents this October. Conclusions are a bonus if you reach them. I ramble on about the taboo subjects, giving you permission to revisit and reconsider them. If you want conclusions, our UCC will give you lots. They won’t make sense, though, if don’t know who you are and whose you are, what side of the fence you’re on, and who’s there with you, why it matters, and to whom.

Power: the ability to effect or resist change.
That’s my operative definition, boiled down from a variety of others. I also enjoy the tie to the common root word ‘pouvoir’. Try the French declension of this ‘power’ word:
‘I can, you can, he can, she can, we can, you can, they can’.

We are dealing with three big taboos: last week sex, this week money, and next week power. Each week, I run around the sanctuary, inviting you to play with three religious dimensions, to make sense of your situation. None of the three dimensions works alone, nor are they ranked. They simply keep subverting and enriching each other, informing and reforming each other.

We start with the facts, the empirical data: ‘the is, the am, and the are so’. A century ago we were a ‘can-do’ church, like James and John, confident that we were Canada’s national church in Canada’s century to bring Christ to the world. Now we are a people living out the ‘you will’ consequences and ramifications of our earlier choices and changing context. After ‘can-do’, comes ‘you will’ – not ‘can’t’. We do have power, the ability to effect or resist change. We do make a difference – it’s just more modest and humbled, compared to what we set out to do.

We do have power, and ability to effect and resist change. We can so! It’s easy to deny it. Everybody’s always pointing to others who enjoy more power. But we have power each of us, and all of us in our communities. That’s related to last week’s rant about how rich we are. But it goes beyond to other kinds of power and capacity. It is, I am, and you are so powerful.

Perhaps we deny our power because we look only to ‘command and control’ kinds of power through domination: the boss, the government. We look to rulers, to the vote, and frame the issues as if were we the bosses, we’d do it differently. There’s a convenient reduction of power into bullies and victims that distorts our recognition of our ability to effect or resist change.

Mao wrote that ‘power grows out of the barrel of a gun’, and the Russians in 1915 were singing, ‘all power to the soviets’. But as Alexander Solzenitzyn wrote in The First Circle: “You only have power as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But once you’ve robbed a man of everything he’s no longer in your power – he’s free again.” Domination or coercion is a real form of power, but suffers from mortal limits in God’s world. Perhaps it’s not God’s way.

But Tex Sample, whom many of us met through the Living the Questions series as a storyteller, affirms in his southern drawl that ‘arguing, fussing, complaining, gossiping, and fighting in factions’ are among the strategies of resistance and subversion used by people with less power to redirect those who purport to command and control. Have you seen that sign on an office desk: “Do you want to talk to the man in charge, or to the woman who really knows what’s going on’?

Remember to start with the facts, the empirical data: ‘the is, the am, and the are so’. Power is real, I am powerful, and you are so. We have the ability to effect or resist change. That’s not limited to command and control unilateral exercises of coercion as if we were bosses and rulers. It’s a rich and varied mix of behaviours and relationships in which we participate among others who have more or less power than we do, all the time.

Then we continued with the norms: ‘the coulda, shoulda, woulda’. We located that stuff in pulpit and lectern. Those moral norms frame and shape and measure our perceptions of the empirical data of actual power, to more fully understand our ability to effect or resist change.

When the pulpit and lectern, or the voices internalized in your head, tell you ‘the powers that be’ of Romans 13 are appointed by God, the all powerful patron delegating through His hierarchy, there are lots of norms about obedience to authority, and peace, order and good government. Our generation has been alert to the twisted outcomes. Uriah Heap in David Copperfield is always mouthing “I’m ever so ‘umble” whilst acting in scheming hypocrisies. Submission of women, “I’m just a girl”, or “only a housewife”, traces back to imagining norms of a Him God.

Abuse of power comes as no surprise. It’s an easy game to take the righteous high road as conscience of the nation, challenging abuses by the powers that be. Far less familiar is an examination the prior assumption of some valid instrumental ‘use’ of power. What permissions and prohibitions do we direct at whom: should and shouldn’t? What indirect uses of power and influence are pejoratively dismissed as ‘manipulation’, inferior to reasoned argument in a forum of natural justice? Which of them are wise tactics if you will lose head on in those forums?

In this world, in my life, there are the powers that be, and the prophets who challenge them. There are people with more and less power than mine in every situation, and my role is rarely either boss or ruler, or righteous advocate. The world is not composed only of caricatures of fat cat profiteers or corrupt politicians on one hand, and crusading journalists or consumer or environmental activists on the other. ‘Shoulda, coulda, woulda’ norms speak to more of us.

If denial of power was our error in the face of the facts, distorted roles is our normative error. Thinking only in terms of caricatures, or of ‘rights bearing individuals operating in relation to universal values, fails to inform our real life in the penultimate. We make choices in this mortal life in mediating structures, based on middle axioms, trying to do less badly for more neighbours. Imagining purely conciliar norms of consensus of equal individuals delays concrete justice – that’s my fundamental beef with ‘rules of natural justice’ that are neither rules, nor natural, nor just, but privileged by dominant educated elites whose messiah is Rawls’.

We can often all agree that there is injustice, but articulate discourse and reflection is not enough. Remember Bishop Tutu’s image of the elephant standing on the mouse’s tail. Everybody agrees that something is wrong, and should change. The mouse says ‘there’s no time like the present!’ Luxuries of broad consensus can confuse ethics with etiquette. As Jack Shaver used to say, “if you want clean choices, you’re not choosing for this world!” Sin boldly, living in generalizations and habits that approximate what’s good and true and beautiful, your norms. Name them, tame them, perhaps even change them: ‘the coulda, shoulda, woulda’ bits.

Finally, we look up into the rafters, out through the stained glass: ‘the mighta, ‘magine, maybe’ in our handy trio. Without the ultimates, what’s the point of religious behaviour? We flatten out the visions beyond our reach or grasp, and we’ve reduced it all to political platforms, programs, the secularized pieties of our age. Does God bless ‘the powers that be’ of Romans 13 – or are they all evil, like the evil empires of Babylon in Revelation 13? Is your heaven one of hierarchical order, or of individuals, perpetually seeking consensus that leaves nobody out, and taking eternity to do it if necessary? Without ultimate visions, how do we measure penultimates?

We risk treating the norms as our goals, rather than modest objectives along the way, without a bit of worship and prayer and spiritual discipline. God forbid we set our sights so low! What would the reign of God look like? What do you imagine as ultimate consummation?

What if ‘the hand that rocked the cradle ruled the world’? What if ‘God’s coming, and she’s black, and she’s angry’? What would you be most embarrassed about in your heaven, about your current living? On a darker side, for what would people ‘burn in hell’ for their part in the evils of this life, in your ultimate vision of justice. Abuse of power is no surprise. But it’s not OK. Look up into the rafters, out through the stained glass: ‘the mighta, ‘magine, maybe’, not only in blithe hope, but also in rueful admission – what folks used to call threats of fire and brimstone.

I told you, we were touching taboos. This week it’s power. Listen again, and read again, the lessons for this Sunday, as humbled Christians.

Listen to Job. Remember Job, who had lots and gave thanks. God’s proud, and Satan’s envious.
So God gives Satan a rope, just so far and no farther: rich and famous to poor and scabby. Chapters of advice followed from Job’s friends. Last week Job whined. This week God pipes up:

Where were you when I made it all?
Who do you think you are?

It’s not Job’s job to second guess God. It’s self-delusion to say you’re only a victim, or instead that if you were in command and control, you could do better. Can-do? As if! Will do…. Instead of telling God what to do, recognize your own power, your own place and role. Use it. Let the book of Job work its subversive magic on assertions of facts, norms, or ideals alone. Let it melt our petty righteousness, as it has always done. Let it teach us empathy, or even hope.

Listen to Mark. Start with the stupid sons of Zebedee, James and John reciting ‘gimme’ prayers:

Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you…
Grant us to sit, one at your right hand, and one at your left, in glory.

Hear those eager can-do ambitions. Recall your own, and those others you know, who started out so optimistic in careers and households. Ruefully, Jesus asks ‘can you face what I’ve been warning you about, the cup of suffering, the baptism of fire’? Oh yeah, no problem! Can-do! Wiser voices, like Jesus’, belatedly recognized, respond ‘you will…’

The other 10 are angry at James and John. Not purely for their failure to understand the nature of suffering redemption – just for the ambition, and getting there first. Politics in the church began before there was a church! Remember Kissinger’s comment that the politics in universities are so vicious, because there is so little at stake, or Jimmy Carter’s claim that reaching a middle east peace accord at Camp David was easy compared to reconciling Baptist elders and deacons.

My Jesus is not standing in the pulpit, delegating hierarchies of power to the can-do guys. My Jesus is not standing in the lectern, assigning posts to right and to left. My Jesus is not floating above and outside of it all, safely transcending all power and politics with a vague promise of a heaven with equal rights bearing individuals of equal power seeking consensus. My Jesus is standing with us, ruefully asking ‘can you’, and ruefully warning that we will drink the cup, and we will be baptized – but that the glory is not his to give. Power, the ability to effect or resist change, is one way – but a good way – to work out identity, expression, meaning and purpose. One person is eagerly affirming ‘can do’, another more bleakly ‘will do’. We’re humbled Christians. That’s how God made us so far. What are you going to do with that? God help us.

Reasonable and faithful people can, and do, disagree with my current attitudes or ideas of power. I have disagreed with them myself in the past, and likely will in the future! I do think we have to deny our denial of power, temper our can-do progressive optimism, and assume appropriate moral roles and voices beyond those assumed in ‘command and control’ models of power. Episcopacy and hierarchy based on delegation from a patron God is not our church’s tradition. However, neither is pure consensus reached by dilatory processes that exclude the inarticulate true to our tradition of conciliar and connectional evangelical and reformed Protestantism.

We’re working on our identity as Christians, placing ourselves as moral agents this October. Conclusions are a bonus if you reach them. They won’t make sense, though, if don’t know who you are and whose you are, what side of the fence you’re on, and who’s there with you, why it matters, and to whom. This week, I suggested that we are humbled Christians, and we’ve been blessed – more than many – less than others. Now we have to figure out how to be a blessing to the world. God help us. As Martin Buber said:

We cannot avoid
Using power
Cannot escape the compulsion
To afflict the world
So let us, cautious in diction
And mighty in contradiction
Love powerfully.

Here’s a blither, but no less bold, response to that same reality of our power and our roles:

I Shall Wear Purple by Jenny Joseph:

When I am an old woman
I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go
and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension
on brandy and summer gloves.
And satin sandals,
and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired.
And gobble up samples in shops
and press alarm bells.
And run my stick along public railings.
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain.
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens.
And learn to spit…
But, maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me
are not too shocked or surprised
when suddenly I am old
and start to wear purple.
A reading from the Book of Job: Chapter 38, verses 1 to 7

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
“Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
“Tell me, if you have understanding.
“Who determined its measurements – surely you know!
“Or who stretched the line upon it?
On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone,
when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?

A Reading from Mark chapter 10, verses 35-45
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" They replied, "We are able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."
When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." Read more...

Rich Christians

RICH CHRISTIANS
Notes from Bill Bruce at www.kewbeachunitedchurch.com
Sunday, October 15, 2006

Texts: Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Mark 10;17-31

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle
Than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God!
…But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first

The echoes of that text touched some anxieties this week – almost as many as last week’s text about adultery and divorce. Professor Marilyn Legge, teaching basic ethics at Emmanuel, says there are three taboo subjects in the church; sex, money, and power. So last week was sex, this week is money, and next week is power, as promised in the August newsletter.

Leonard Cohen, covered by Rufus Wainwright in the soundtrack for the movie I’m Your Man, wrote ‘Everybody Knows’, which opens and closes like this:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over, everybody knows that the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed, the poor stay poor, and the rich get rich
That's how it goes, and everybody knows…

And everybody knows that you're in trouble, everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary, to the beach in Malibu
Everybody knows it's coming apart, take one last look at this sacred heart before it blows
And everybody knows

We are rich Christians. Our context has changed. Our forebears could claim the moral high ground of refugees and immigrants and homesteaders, living through depression and war. Not us. We are rich, and have been all our lives, and not primarily by any achievement of our own.

We are rich Christians. Our contextual comparison communities changed. Our neighbours are even richer than we are, but our city, country, and world has skewed wealth much further. the bimodal distribution of wealth clarifies, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. the centre cannot hold, and we in the middle of the graph know we might slip one way or the other, Where do you want your kids to live in that world? But for now, we’re in a sweet spot.

We are rich Christians. Much of it is beyond our choice to be something else. Gregory Baum speaks of the ‘social wage’, of public health, education and social safety nets (and of original sin as socially transmitted privilege). Even if we chose mendicant Christianity, taking vows of poverty, we would be like Jean Vanier, of a rich family, whose choice was a luxury. Even if we chose conspicuous philanthropy like Bill Gates, first we’d have to achieve the great wealth, with proportionate crimes. We’ve got to live with being rich Christians, more or less.

We’re working on our identity as Christians, placing ourselves as moral agents. If we draw conclusions, it’s a bonus. I ramble on about the taboo subjects, giving you permission to revisit and reconsider them. If you want conclusions, our UCC will give you too many, a pronouncement on every issue of the day! However, they won’t make sense if don’t know who you are and whose you are, what side of the fence you’re on, and who’s there with you.

Ron Sider wrote Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity about 30 years ago. When I arrived here at Kew, I was surprised to see several copies of the book in our church library. Dick Allan told be you’d had several study groups work at the book. Most resolved the cognitive dissonance by moving to self-righteous social justice congregations – but they’re still rich Christians, and God knows if they’ve relieve the tension between their own lifestyles and scriptural emphasis on issues of rich and poor.

But who read David Chilton’s response, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators? These are not battles of statistics, but of ethical analysis. Distributive justice and equality are powerful levers to move a rich Christian conscience. Just deserts, and consequences to choices, are equally familiar mantras for us in the middling classes and parents, in a meritocracy. Economic justice and the social gospel is presented as a polarized side in opposition to personal piety and evangelical fervour. Most of us don’t even know we’ve been assigned a side!

We are dealing with the big taboos: last week sex, this week money, and next week power. Each week, I’m running around the sanctuary inviting you to play with three religious approaches to making sense of our situation. None of the three works alone, nor are they ranked. They simply keep subverting and enriching each other, informing and reforming each other, if we let them.

We started with the facts, the empirical data: ‘the is, the am, and the are so’. The fact is, we do have stuff, and lots of it. We sit in a church insured for $4.5M replacement value. September financials show, for the first three quarters of 2006, $230K donations and $305K total income, steady year over year from 2005. This is a church of rich Christians. It is, I am, and you are so.

About 230 households will get third quarter statements with their newsletters next week, saying thanks for their generosity, averaging $1,000 so far this year, inviting more of you to give more. Look around you in worship, at 100-150 people on a typical Sunday, and give thanks for rich Christians like these – and give thanks for those not present, but still supporting us on the weeks they are absent. Of course, we spend more than we receive, and defer capital repairs, too.

I invited you to check your wallet or your handbag. What are you carrying right now? How much room is there on those credit cards, and capacity in those bank cards for liquid cash? Then I asked how did you drive to church today, and the sticker price of those vehicles. I asked about the market value of that home you left to get here this morning. I stopped before reviewing the clothes we were all wearing, let alone what’s in our closets, or before inquiring about the prices of the cottages and travels and recreations for which we miss worship when we are not here.

Remember to start with the facts, the empirical data: ‘the is, the am, and the are so’. The fact is, we have stuff, and lots of it. Too rarely we sit to that for long enough. Statistics are usually polemical, not descriptive, so shift our attention to the very rich, and the pornography of poverty, to make a point before we have remembered who we are, and whose we are. The very titles make the points: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: From Affluence to Generosity, compared with
Productive Christians in Age of Guilt Manipulators. It’s hard for us not to rush ahead.

Give thanks for how God has blessed you, and recognize it, and care for each other, the is, the am, and the are so, right there in the pews. It’s not that infant’s fault that she was born lucky! When does it become OK to trash her for her appearance of selfish privilege? When do we turn that pointing finger, or at least the rest of them, at ourselves, and become paralyzed with guilt, and admit our anxiety, that we don’t deserve it all, or earn it all, or securely own it all?

That’s why we continued with the norms: ‘the coulda, shoulda, woulda’. The standards against which we measure ourselves, and are measured, are tough, here in the middling classes, and among parents and their children in schooling. The subtle codes of clothes, cars, addresses, and of holidays, and recreations, are around us all the time. We may not make it, but we know the norms, and measure ourselves, and find ourselves wanting. Locate that stuff in pulpit and lectern.

‘Freedom 55’ is close to home for me. My peers are retiring comfortably already. I have hope of $20K annually in 2020 if I can keep a steady fulltime pastorate till then. I’m rich, in a country where 60% of employees have no pension plan, but I am least successful compared to my peers.
Even if you take away memories of hard times past, and the expectations of rainy days ahead, we are rich. Sure, I had nothing, neither debts nor assets, zero company pension left, and not a proverbial pot, at age 40. I always promised downward mobility to my partner, and despite this temporary blip of solvency, I plan to deliver. Those are the competing norms I wrestle with.

Financial planners and personal bankers are the new purveyors of moral norms. ‘Banker boy’, as we christened the first one ‘personal banker’ who was younger than us. Since then, it’s usually ‘banker girl’, less than half my age, shaking her head bemusedly. They all tell us we have underused our credit capacity, and should save more in tax sheltered RRSP’s at least, and though they won’t really walk us through the budget exercises, our charity level is way too high, for church, schools, museums, art galleries, diseases.

You know the norms, the voices that measure you, inside your head and heart. Perhaps it’s the voice of a parent, or of a neighbour, or a sibling. Perhaps these are the regrets, perhaps the victories, about critical paths through depression or recession or boom or bust. These are what I’m calling norms, the ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda’. Some of you thought I was against them last week. Absolutely not! I am in the business of norms, and owe you community chatter about norms – you can’t have meaningful ‘is, am, and are so’ without them. Name them and tame them, and perhaps we can change them. But I like norms: ‘the coulda, shoulda, woulda’ bits.

Finally, we look up into the rafters, out through the stained glass: ‘the mighta, ‘magine, maybe’ in our handy trio. Without the ultimates, what’s the point of religious behaviour? We flatten out the visions beyond our reach or grasp, and we’ve reduced it all to political platforms, programs, the secularized pieties of our age. (Incidentally, this does not refer to Stephen Mabee, my colleague, who makes a good role model and possible norm for us all, but not an ultimate ideal!)

We risk treating the norms as our goals, rather than modest objectives along the way, without a bit of worship and prayer and spiritual discipline. God forbid we set our sights so low! What would the reign of God look like? What do you imagine as ultimate consummation? You know the stories and jokes I tell badly and too often:
➢ A guy wakes up after he dies, in an ultimate luxury condominium with food, fabrics, media centre. He tries it all out and enjoys it, but after a while, he gets bored. ‘Hey, is this all there is to heaven?’ A voice replies, ‘Oh, is that where you thought you were?’
➢ Heaven and hell are exactly the same. Each is like a great feast, with tables laden with beautiful foods, and all kinds of people at each part of the table. In both heaven and hell, we all have three foot chopsticks bound to our forearms. In hell, they starve. In heaven, they feed each other
On a darker side, I keep acknowledging that I expect to ‘burn in hell’ for my complicity in the
evils of this life. I don’t stop colluding, but it keeps me from living too technocratically.

I told you, we were touching taboos. This week it’s money. Sider taught us how often it’s mentioned in scripture. Chilton went on to point out the many embarrassing illiberal bible biases. Listen again, and read again, the lessons for this Sunday, as rich Christians.

Listen to Job. Remember, Job, who has lots and gives thanks. God’s proud, and Satan’s envious.
So God gives Satan a rope, just so far and no farther: rich and famous to poor and scabby. Chapters of advice from Job’s friends, and Job pipes up today, claiming a case against God.
‘Is not, am not, are not so’! ‘Coulda, shoulda, woulda’! Where are you, God? Come here!

Then a pause. God won’t be construed that way. That God’s not there. And then, Job’s heart is faint, and Job is terrified, and wishes he could hide in darkness. Oops. The move from facts to norms to ideals will render any of us fearful. As we said last week, we’re all of us hypocrites, if hypocrisy is based in a gap between our actual words and deeds, our norms, and our ideals.

Religion is in the business of all three. Ethicists call it a ‘naturalistic fallacy’ however, to equate what is with what ought to be. Both Sider and Chilton make their own versions of a leap of faith. If we lose track of the distinctions with them, we end up either blessing status quo goods, and the powers that be, or colluding with paralyzing guilt justifying inaction, or perhaps worse for me, acquiescing to the smug self-righteousness of the privileged leftish elites of our day. But worst of all, perhaps, would be to remain reduced to irrelevant spiritual idealists ignoring materialism.

So let the book of Job work its subversive magic on assertions of facts, norms, or ideals alone. Let it melt our petty righteousness, as it has always done. Let it teach us empathy, or even hope.

Listen to Mark. Start in public with good citizens: ‘Why call me good? No one is good but God! Follow all the commandments.’ I do. ‘Then, give away all your stuff.’ I can’t. There’s not much complicity with the world there, just alienating another potential supporter. Look to the pulpit, and hear the norms of humility plus commandments plus giving away your stuff. Tough norms.

Then huddle privately, with the stupid disciples who try to get Jesus ‘on message’ again. ‘It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.’ Great. What’s the good advice there? It’s impossible! ‘For you, impossible. Not for God’. Look to the lectern, and hear what my Catholic commentary calls God’s ‘preferential option for the poor’. It’s a norm.

Finally sit with Peter. Ask for a bit of credit for all you’ve already given. ‘Nothing you paid that won’t pay off a hundredfold now in this age – and in the age to come, eternal life’. Oh, yeah, and if you’re claiming seniority, ‘Many who are first shall be last, and the last will be first.’ Utilitarian ethics, or shrewd skills of the middling classes, have limits. Keeping score in facts and data or at best with norms, without ideals, teleological ends in mind, just isn’t enough.

This is rabbinic midrash, not conclusory argument. It’s as subversive in playing norms against one another as is the folk tale of Job. Scripture offers a variety of voices affirming or challenging money and what we do with it. My Jesus is not standing in the pulpit, denying me hope. My Jesus is not standing in the lectern, taking sides against me. My Jesus is not floating above and outside of it all, safely transcending all our pleasures and anxieties. My Jesus is standing with us,
ruefully mourning that ‘rich’ is passing. Ultimately, it’s barely one way – but a good way – to work out identity, expression, meaning and purpose. One person indulges appetite, another guilt.

We’re rich Christians. That’s how God made us so far. What are you going to do with that?

My Jesus is not a modern liberal Protestant like me. My Jesus is not making a neutral thing of the facts of our experience as rich Christians. My Jesus is not simply confusing current statistical norms of bimodal distribution of wealth, even in our affluent first world which already enjoys the benefits of a bimodal distribution of wealth with the two-thirds world, with moral norms. That would be a naturalistic fallacy mixing is and ought. Nor is my Jesus refusing to recognize our reality, nor abandoning us to our attempts to seek faithful norms about our money, nor denying us hopes of heaven as mortal failures. Mine is Emmanuel, incarnate, God with us.

So by the end of this half-hour sermon, I had hoped to offer the same architecture for ethical reflection on our differing moral positions as I did last week about sex. I thought I had affirmed and acknowledged the dialogical and subversive relationships among our empirical facts, our moral norms, and our ultimate ideals:
➢ The is, the are, and the am so – at the table, in the pew, under the roof: here, now, us facts
➢ The coulda, shoulda, woulda – in the pulpit and lectern, in teaching and preaching: norms
➢ The mighta, ‘magine, maybe – in the rafters, in the air, beyond our reach or grasp: ideals

After our worship service, we had a good meeting considering the ‘descriptors’ for a newly uniting church in the beach, a possibility we are exploring with our neighbours. We are rich Christians – that’s why United Churches are clustered in affluent areas, having abandoned whole boroughs in this city. We have not all resolved the cognitive dissonance by huddling within a few self-righteous (yet rich) ‘social justice’ congregations. Some of us are still sweating out the hard work of welcoming young affluent straight homeowners and their children, given our own ambivalence about our money and our stuff and our changing neighbourhood. Some of us are still trying to work out a norm for church that doesn’t parasite off the endowments of the past.

Reasonable and faithful people can, and do, disagree with my current attitudes toward money. I have disagreed with them myself in the past, and likely will in the future! I am aware that this recognizes the facts, that we are rich Christians. I am aware that this rubs the fur the wrong way of those who see the world as equal individuals called to high universal principles and programs. There is no such neutral position, however. We who stand at this edge of the Christian communion have a particular role in offering our modest gifts from the middling classes, neither medicants taking vows of poverty, nor philanthropists bestowing largesse from outrageous capital fortunes. I expect others to share my norms, of giving a lot to church, and more to other charities, in tension and balance and subversive conversation with our other uses of our stuff.

I give thanks for it all, and count on the grace and mercy of God as I engage the conversation with our community of experience, discourse, norms and ideals. We are rich Christians, and we’ve been blessed. Now we have to figure out how to be a blessing to the world. God help us.











Job, chapter 23, verses 1-9, 16-17
Then Job answered: "Today also my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy despite my groaning. Oh, that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments. I would learn what he would answer me, and understand what he would say to me. Would he contend with me in the greatness of his power? No; but he would give heed to me. There an upright person could reason with him, and I should be acquitted forever by my judge.
"If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him. God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me; If only I could vanish in darkness, and thick darkness would cover my face!


Mark, chapter 10 verses 17-31
As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth. Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.
Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."
Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age--houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions--and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first." Read more...

Nuclear Christians

NUCLEAR CHRISTIANS
Notes from Bill Bruce at www.kewbeachunitedchurch.com
Thanksgiving Sunday, October 8, 2006

Texts: Job 1 & 2 (sel), Mark 10:2-16

Jesus said to them,
Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,
And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.

That’s how the lessons ended this Thanksgiving Sunday here. Most United Churches ducked the text, in favour of an alternative reading. After all, we’re celebrating at home and at church with Norman Rockwell images of mom, pop, kids at turkey table after morning worship in a full church with harvest displays. Why remind people of the awkward scripture about divorce?

Who was in our church this Sunday? Who was at your table this holiday weekend? Who writes the script, plays the lead and supporting roles? Who cooks and cleans up? Who’s really in the house, down the pew, under this roof? Who’s really not at the table any more? You never know who’s in the congregation – but I knew we all winced at the closing words of the gospel text.

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina opens with this sentence:
All happy families resemble one another,
each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

There are still two kinds of people in the world: those who think this is the best of all possible worlds – and those who are afraid that the first bunch might be right! Are you an optimist or pessimist? Do you look at the world through rose coloured glasses, in black and white, or greys? Thanksgiving holiday focuses us on the domestic and the parochial, the home and family, the church and congregation. That does not mean we are all seeing the same things!

We are nuclear Christians. We are participants and products of a nuclear age, the 20th century, now living into the next century. We formed and shaped – and were formed by and shaped by - the zenith of the nuclear family. After extended families more common in the past, and before the atomized individualism currently emergent, we experienced the peak of the normative nuclear family of two parents and their children in an independent home – then its decline.

We are nuclear Christians. We are participants and products of a nuclear age, the 20th century, now living into the next century. We formed and shaped – and were formed by and shaped by - the splitting of the atom. Atomic fission produced bombs and electric power. Out of an age of world wars with conventional arms, we survived a cold war of nuclear stalemate, and into a new age when one superpower and various local regimes and movements use nuclear threats.

We are nuclear Christians. We’ve been blowing stuff up. It’s not over, but our context is not the same as when we began. It’s time to take stock, and acknowledge our context. Words like ‘family’ cover a different semantic field than they used to reference. We spend a lot of time talking past each other, across categories of facts, norms and ideals. We tried to sort that out a bit this Thanksgiving Sunday. See if it helps you, reading along later, to cringe a bit less in the echoes of the words attributed to Jesus about divorce and adultery in the gospel lesson.
We already started with ‘the is, the am, and the are so’. These are the empirical facts and data. Who’s in the room, at the table, in this moment? Who’s in the pew, by your side, in this hour? How does that compare to the empirical facts of another time, or another place, for other people?

You can try to see and hear clearly in the present tense, in the here and now, as a starting point. Perhaps you can even learn to give thanks for ‘the is, the am, and the are so’ first, before you go comparing it to the past or the future or some other place or some other home or church. Try it!

Then we acknowledged the ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda’. These are the normative frames by which we measure our own experience and perceptions. We placed them in the pulpit and lectern in our sanctuary. We associate that middle distance with normative voices of scripture and preachers – and certainly others do too. Who thinks I’m supposed to promote those norms?

We’ve got to generalize and group our individual factoids and data about who’s at the table, in the room, down the pew and under the roof with us. Inclusion, exclusion, loss and anticipation, make different sense of the same empirical sensory experience. Big crowd! Nice family! Yeah? But they ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda’ been better, according to the norms we have internalized as voices that judge us and find most of us wanting in our family and church lives most of the time.

What do you miss, and what do you aspire to, for your family or your church? Do we recognize ‘the is, the am, and the are so’ – or judge it all against the norms of ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda’? Thanksgiving might be better if we sorted that out a bit better. As Bruce Cockburn sings to us, ‘the trouble with normal is it always gets worse.” This is a normal family. This is normal church.

Finally, we looked farther for the ‘mighta, ‘magine, maybe’. That’s the world of ‘what if’s’ – ideals, hopes, visions, utopias, of the reign of God, paradise or Eden or heaven. That cloud of witnesses, that heavenly host, by whom we are surrounded in a sanctuary like ours, cannot be ignored. Imagine them up, and out, beyond our reach, and our reach always exceeds our grasp.

We’re all of us hypocrites, if hypocrisy is based in a gap between our actual words and deeds, our norms, and our ideals. Religion is in the business of all three. Ethicists call it a ‘naturalistic fallacy’ however, to equate what is with what ought to be. If we lose track of the distinctions, we end up either blessing status quo goods, and the powers that be, or colluding with the evils of the day, tempted by fashionable sins of our culture. Worse, we are abstract irrelevant idealists.

This Thanksgiving Sunday, we reflected on the domestic and the parochial, the home and family, the church and congregation. We gathered as nuclear Christians, who’ve been blowing stuff up. We brought a lot of invisible diversity of experience and norms and ideals, and we did not all perceive the same things. I talked, and we all thought, about our norms for families and church. Who’s at the table, down the pew, under our roof as family and as church this holiday weekend?

I went to ‘Gay Rights and Religious Expression: An Irreconcilable Conflict?’ last week at UofT. You can watch it at the UofT Faculty of Law website, under ‘alumni’. Jennifer Nedelsky and Giulio Silano spoke as eminent academic authorities. Nedelsky teaches the law religion and public discourse course I’ve been auditing, belongs to Bathurst UC. Silano went to law school with me, continued with the Pontifical Institute as a canon law expert, and teaches at St Mike’s. They’d take opposing ‘sides’ on same sex marriage and related issues, I expected, just as people in our families and in our church do. They’d just be better at talking about it, I thought.

Professor Nedelsky described an earlier confluence of social, legal and religious norms which begun to diverge in the past century. We no longer assume the same things, and share the same conclusions. Who gets the backing of the state? Who gets the blessing of the church? Who gets shamed in the schoolyard, or favoured in the workplace?

Professor Silano began with poetry, and mourned indissoluble unions, based on sacramental consent between the baptized, lost to modernity. From divorce to abortion and now to same sex marriage, he said that social sanctions both positive and negative changed the landscape for individuals’ choices, not only in odds of success but the very possibility of sacramental marriage.

Both recognize our changing context. We are nuclear Christians. We’ve been blowing stuff up. But one celebrates, while the other grieves. To be fair, each showed respect and empathy for the other’s sentiments. The very substance of our experience changes with context. Even if our language and words don’t change, or even if our rituals and acts are repeated in the same ways, their meaning has shifted. One celebrates, and the other grieves. How about you?

I’ve been licensed to perform weddings, for the past 23 years. People don’t approach me nearly as often as they used to do, and they are older when they come, and have been together longer, or serially with more partners, before they get to me. I always tell them ‘it’s too soon or too late to talk you out of this’ by the time they get to me. I rarely say no – I don’t have to, as my colleagues on staff here do most of the heavy lifting of rites and rituals.

I confirm the informed consent of a couple, and shared assumptions about what they are doing. I witness that this is what the state calls a marriage, and that it is what the church does, too. Criteria aren’t too stringent: one at a time, no term limits, competent to consent, not on the list of prohibited relatives. Beyond those minimal requirements, what social sanctions, or coercive pressures by family and community, make people get together, stay together, and do it better?

I do ask couples what they think we are doing, and what they think will stay the same or change. Does God watch you marry, or help you marry, or marry you? Do clergy watch, help, or do it? Do the words matter, like ‘obey’, ‘as long as you both shall love’, or ‘who gives this woman’? Does the consumer behaviour or final price tag express family and community as you intend it?

We who appear to match the old norms have rarely been challenged. But nobody fits them all anymore, and many just appear to do so. What’s a straight white man to do? We who lost the convergence, ourselves and those we love, are raw, hurt, wounded, lost. That’s who’s here, and that’s who is loved by those who are here. The original goods we sought, of love and mutual affection, of rearing of children, with social sanctions positive and negative, needed social support so we didn’t have to do it all alone. We wanted families and communities. We still do.

Silano claims that for twenty centuries there has been no challenge to the norm, dismissing a few exceptions as ‘Margaret Mead arguments’. Tradition says a sacrament is a visible sign of invisible grace, instituted by Christ, necessary to salvation. But Protestants just recognize two. Marriage is not one of them. Luther wed, calling the church arrogant to claim as redemptive sacrament what belonged in the order of creation, and could be regulated by the state just as well. Calvin wed later, claiming God’s part in a marriage norm more like a school for saints, training of citizens for the reign of God. Voltaire in turn sneered that depending on where one lived, marriage was ‘a little church, a little state, or a little club’. The norms have been challenged and changed before, and they are being, and will be, challenged and changed again.

The Protestant genius is not simply fragmentation, though, but reframing. I’m sick of my United Church co-religionists speaking only of inclusivity, diversity, or freedom, and avoiding their implicit norming, and responsibility to offer social sanctions to support each other. Included in what, by whom? Diversity within what commonality? Freedom from what, and for what?

These are the questions of ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda’, between ‘the is, the am, and the are so’, and the ‘mighta, ‘magine, maybe’. We owe each other company in that discourse, living in the boundaries and outside the gates. There we find language to express and to judge our lives with meaning and purpose, narrative and memory and hope.

So we listened to the opening of the book of Job this day. It’s one of the ‘once upon a time’ tales in scripture, adopted from common folklore. In the Babylonian exile, we lived in a discourse shaped by Zoroastrian assumptions of gods in their heavens – which must have irritated our orthodox monotheists and anti-idolaters. But the charm of the tale is contagious. Imagine a man blessed and thanking. Along comes Satan, a new character skulking in scripture. Satan speculates that if Job were less blessed, he might do less thanking. God lets Satan test Job.

Imagine that story as a model for not absolutizing our current state of blessed good fortune, nor of claiming our situation as entitled or deserved, but rather in a wider context. What if the facts changed, and ‘the is, the am, and the are so’ went from ‘rich and famous’ to ‘scabby and sick’? What are the norms and patterns that gods and devils would recognize if they were walking about, to and fro, or watching over us all? Try a gods-eye view, or seek a diabolical perspective. What in the end are our visions and ideals, beyond the penultimate of even a Babylonian heaven?

Where’s your god in the story? Is he delivering on special providence, messing, testing, and rewarding Job and the rest of us? Is your god busy setting and policing norms? Or is your god serenely detached, with a big picture process creating, redeeming, sustaining? Stay tuned for Job this month in the lessons – but for now, enjoy the folktale opening, and let it work its subversive magic on any assertion of facts, norms, or ideals alone.

We also listened to Mark’s gospel this day. Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked,
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?
They have some ‘is, am, and are so’ stuff in mind, eh? They’re backing Jesus into a corner of irreconcilable ‘coulda, shoulda, woulda’ norms. So Jesus answered them,
What did Moses command you?
Look at the pulpit, and recognize a set of norms, that permitted a man to divorce his wife, subject to various conditions of justice and community sanctions. But look then to the lectern, and hear the quotations from the beginnings of Genesis, taking a much harsher position. This is rabbinic midrash, not conclusory argument. It’s as subversive in playing norms against one another as is the folk tale of Job. Scripture offers a variety of voices affirming or challenging repartnering.

My Jesus is not standing in the pulpit, condescending with Moses to permit men to ditch wives. My Jesus is not standing in the lectern, taking a Genesis hardline against severing bound souls. My Jesus is not floating above and outside of it all, safely transcending all our griefs and joys. My Jesus is standing with us, ruefully mourning that repartnering is akin to adultery, experiences demanding passion and compassion. One celebrates, the other grieves. What about your Jesus?

My Jesus is not a modern liberal Protestant like me. My Jesus is not making a neutral thing of the facts of our experience as nuclear Christians. My Jesus is not simply confusing current statistical norms of serial monogamy with moral ones, in naturalistic fallacy mixing is and ought. Nor is my Jesus refusing to recognize our reality, nor abandoning our attempts to seek norms, nor denying us hopes of heaven as mortal failures. Mine is Emmanuel, incarnate, God with us.

So by the end of this half-hour sermon, I had hoped to offer architecture for ethical reflection on our differing moral positions. I thought I had affirmed and acknowledged the dialogical and subversive relationships among our empirical facts, our moral norms, and our ultimate ideals:
➢ The is, the are, and the am so – at the table, in the pew, under the roof: here, now, us facts
➢ The coulda, shoulda, woulda – in the pulpit and lectern, in teaching and preaching: norms
➢ The mighta, ‘magine, maybe – in the rafters, in the air, beyond our reach or grasp: ideals

But before we continued, I did confirm my own position, and our congregation’s council position on weddings. We do celebrate weddings of people who are not both baptized, not members of this congregation or denomination or who are not Christian, who are never married or previously married and now widowed or divorced, all in the discretion of the minister licensed to solemnize marriages. We have celebrated same-sex weddings since 2003, with the unanimous approval of our guiding council. If any couple comes in good faith in the future, we will be as open.

Reasonable and faithful people can, and do, disagree with my current positions. I have disagreed with them myself in the past, and likely will in the future! I am aware that this recognizes the fact of same-sex partnerships, just as we have long celebrated partnerships beyond our membership, and of those divorced and remarrying. I am aware that our practices challenge and change the norms of those who hold marriage to be the exclusive domain of the baptized, or unavailable after divorce, or restricted to a man and a woman. There is no neutral position, however, and we who stand at the edge of the Christian communion have a particular role in offering our modest sanction to those couples denied the same in good conscience elsewhere.

I give thanks for it all, and count on the grace and mercy of God as I engage the conversation with our community of experience, discourse, norms and ideals. We are nuclear Christians, and we’ve been blowing things up. We want to mend and support relationships, too. God help us.

A reading from the Book of Job Chapter 1:1, 2:1-10

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.
That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil….
One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord,
and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord.

The Lord said to Satan, Where have you come from?
Satan answered the Lord,
From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.
The Lord said to Satan,
Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth,
a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.
He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him,
to destroy him for no reason.

A reading from the Book of Job Chapter 1:1, 2:1-10 (cont’d)

Then Satan answered the Lord,
Skin for skin!
All that people have they will give to save their lives.
But stretch out our hand now and touch his one and his flesh,
And he will curse you to your face.

The Lord said to Satan,
Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.

So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord,
and inflicted loathsome sores on Job
from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.

Then his wife said to him
Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.

But he said to her,
You speak as any foolish woman would speak.
Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?
In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

A Reading from the Gospel of Mark
Chapter 10:2-16, pew bibles page 822

Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked,
Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?

He answered them,What did Moses command you?

They said, Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.

But Jesus said to them, Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.
But from the beginning of creation,‘God made them male and female.’
‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife,
And the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
Therefore what God had joined together, let no one separate.’

Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter.

He said to them, Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her,
And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. Read more...

Jesus the Exorcist

JESUS THE EXORCIST
Notes from Bill Bruce at www.kewbeachunitedchurch.com
Sunday, October 1, 2006

Texts: James 5:13-20, Mark 9:38-50

This is the last of a series of 5 sermons. I’ve been speaking about Jesus: Unemployed, Bigot, Terrorist, Fool, and now Exorcist. This is the end. Is that a relief – or a bit of a loss? I’ve been preaching about Jesus, trying to challenge our focus on the teachings in our gospels, and in our church, attributed to Jesus. Our liberal church, with its progressive spirit, loves Jesus’ teachings, or at least our version of them. Jesus is our sage, summing up golden rules, and the ten suggestions, as the dominant figure in our denomination. And, I’m arguing, it’s not enough.

I’ve been asking you to close your eyes and run your Jesus movie. Do you think others are seeing the same film in their mind’s eye? Change the casting and the cutting. Silence your soundtrack, or dub it another language. What kind of Jesus movie do you have now?

Today, we’ve got a story of an exorcism: the driving out of a bad spirit possessing a person, and replacing it with a good and godly spirit. What’s your movie do with that? The biblical gospels love exorcisms. Jesus does them, disciples do them, Simon Magus the competition does them, and today, even copycats do them. But when I say exorcism, and Jesus, what’s your movie like?

Is it like the 1973 movie The Exorcist? Is Linda Blair’s head is spinning around 360 degrees on her shoulders, and Max Von Sydow in full clericals is the exorcist? Or is it like Ernest Angeley, TV faith healer? Can you recover a movie about Jesus and exorcism, that has integrity with your images of Jesus and of exorcism? Our liberal Jesus movie is a documentary, a teaching movie, didactic and dull, like the old 32 millimeter films from 1960’s school libraries.

God forbid that my epitaph is: ‘he meant well’. Little better is ‘you made me think’. Is that your church and your gospel, a collection of liberal teachings that meant well, or made you think? When you have engaged your Jesus, your faith, your church on a Sunday, has anything changed? Can you hear? ‘Nice church! It doesn’t interfere with my politics, business practice, or religion!’ As Marx wrote on Feuerbach, ‘philosophers try to describe the world. The point is to change it.’

We may need to deconstruct and reconstruct what we imagine as exorcism. What is it to be possessed, by addiction, or compulsive behaviour? What is it to be emotionally, irrationally possessed, out of control, or in the control of something else or somebody else? Does it have to present as a particular set of psychotic symptoms? If you can construe possession differently, then you can visualize exorcism anew, and perhaps even fit it into your Jesus movie.

On one hand, you’ve got facts, empirical bits of data, measurable and repeatable. On the other extreme, you’ve got personal opinion and intuition, inarticulate and unprovable. But in between lies a vast range and variety of ‘believing’ and ‘knowing’ that have more to do with communities of discourse and communities of judgment making sense between the empirical and emotional. Rearrange some of the ways you group your facts, and arrange your responses!

Thomas Kuhn coined the term ‘paradigm shift’ in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. My edition is 1970, but the original 1962 monograph, 1947 classes established the ideas. Theories that explain a lot are challenged at their edges of failure, until replaced by new ones that explain as much, plus more. Scientific thinking lurches forward in leaps and consolidation. Doesn’t it?

Juan Luis Segundo made a similar argument in 1975 in Liberation of Theology. Born in 1925, his lifetime of work in Latin America revealed to him a ‘hermeneutical circle’. We have a way of reading the bible and interpreting reality, and we rely on that faith, until some cognitive dissonance, or ‘hermeneutical suspicion’, give us pause to doubt. We can revise our reading, with new ones that make sense of at least as much, and more – until that in turn is challenged.

My partner teaches 10 year olds. They are doing a lot of robotics, in an international nanotechnology competition. She rolls her eyes about those still teaching that the atom is like a small solar system of nucleus with electrons in orbit, and I realize that I am one of the ignorant! How did we miss that waves might explain better than particles, and that muons, quarks, gluons, and pions promise another revolution of technology and health care?

I don’t understand it. I can’t see it. They didn’t just mean well. They didn’t just make me think. But people like Dave Houlden working in teams based on theories fixed my brain, and the patch is still holding. He tells me the 6 platinum coils each cost $600, but that’s just for materials. Buying car tires is similar - labour and installation is extra, to deliver and cauterize the spot. I’m glad they acted on their best approximation of what the problem was and how to fix it!

Between empirical data or facts on the one hand, and personal opinion or intuition on the other, there is a vast range of human thinking and action. Communities and discourse and communities of judgment build generalizations and theories and try them out in practice. When they reach limits, we have paradigm shifts, and hermeneutical circles, to approximate our best shot at better. We’re construing reality, making sense, and sharing purpose. It’s religion, aesthetics, humanity!

People wish there was a simpler world of 1:1 correlation between words and things, and that language worked in direct referents, and not through metaphor and theory. I tried relief high school teaching in the north. I asked the kids why I was wrong to think that chemistry was based on tiny invisible angels and fairies, not their diagrams and models. I told them I preferred our old commonlaw constitution and ‘peace, order and good government’ to this new fangled Charter of Rights and Freedoms which I didn’t believe in. They didn’t ask me to teach again.

(I’m being exposed to a theory of communities of judgment attributed to Hannah Arendt this fall. Between empirical fact and personal opinion, somehow the common sense of community is proposed as the measure of justification and legitimation. It sounds vaguely like 19th century Scottish ‘Common Sense Theology’, but I’m sure it’s better. It relies on ‘enlarged mentality’ or capacity of individuals to empathize or imagine others’ community and common sense. That reminds me of Edward Bullough’s aesthetic of ‘distantiation’, or therapeutic self-differentiation.)

I’m not looking for the one final authoritative answer, or analytical framework. Neither are you. We’re all trying to make some sense of belonging, believing, and behaving with others, and the harder we try to do it, the more we find our limits, and shift paradigms, and round hermeneutical circles, seeking our more communities and circles of discourse and judgment, of talk and choice.

I don’t know art, but I know what is liked. Nuit Blanche last night offered a variety of experiential performances by artists downtown, and access to ongoing venues. Do try to get to the ROM for a Cuban artist Carlos Garaicoa’s exhibit of Campus o la Babel del conocimiento (Campus of the Babel of Knowledge), continuing to the end of December. This parody of a modern university, what George Grant christened the ‘multiversity’, delivers isolated data to isolated individuals moving through modules, denying them discourse until their fifth year. ‘That’s a joke, son’, as Foghorn Leghorn used to say in Bugs Bunny cartoons. As Michael Fullan the educator at OISE says, knowledge is data socially processed.

Or again, try W.R. Rodgers’ poem about Armagh, the image of a modern town built over remnants of more ancient ways of being, an industrial construction over older artifacts:

Raised at a time when Reason was all the rage,
Of grey and equal stone,
This blank face of Armagh covers an age
Of clay and feathers and bone

Preach your own sermon, continue your own conversations with your many communities of discourse and judgment. Do it in your head, and do it in the flesh in the week and in the world. If God’s got something to say to you, God will get it said. If God’s got something to show you, it will be revealed. If God’s going to touch you, it will reach your heart and change you. God grant you ears to hear, and eyes to see, and heart to feel that ‘word of God’. Then live it out – because ‘you may be the only gospel your neighbour reads this week, so write the vision and make it plain, that she who runs may read it’, as we keep commissioning you.

Listen again to the gospel of Mark. Don’t hear it in mellifluous condescending tones. Change the soundtrack of your Jesus movie, to something with a bit more life, flesh and blood, or as the poet says, some ‘clay and feathers and bone’:

Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name,
and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us….

Mark’s disciples never get it right. What a bunch of whiners! Can you hear the classroom snitch? ‘Teacher, they’re doing it wrong. We tried to stop them. They’re not doing it the way we say!’ Mark figures Jesus must have responded as Moses did to Aaron in Numbers 11, to let them be. After all, are we in the business of right ideas, of order in doctrine, dogma, or orthodoxy alone? Surely we are in the business of getting it done, of being and doing right, practicing orthopraxy?

Life’s not all right, God knows. Are you complicit? God’s up to something. Are you helping? What possesses you, and what possesses those you know? Is it ambition, or greed, or consumption, or addiction? Re-imagine healing, and exorcism. It’s making a difference. Change. Don’t just mean well. Don’t just make me think. Make it better!

My own tendency is to spend too much time knowing, or trying for a perfect truth, fully justified and legitimized, rationalized, and analyzed. But it’s G.K. Chesterton who reminds us that if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly. Successive approximations, trying things out and putting them on the road, are the stuff of scientific revolutions and hermeneutical circles. Communities of discourse and judgment measure the improvement in making common sense.

But what difference does it make? If your church disappeared from this street, would it matter? When you enter or remember this circle of people who gather and act and speak in Jesus’ name, does that change things for you, or for the world? If you are blessed, can you go bless in turn? The sayings about cutting parts of yourself off are not good advice, but graphic imaging of cycles of judgment, and fixing what’s not working right. Reframe. Shift paradigms. Exorcize.

Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name,
and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us….

Luke and Matthew played with this story, too, expressing different movements in the ‘big tent’, different circles of talk and choice. Mark’s distinctive contribution is the ‘in my name’. Use the name of Jesus, and try to do good, and you can’t soon badmouth Jesus. Let it go. They’re pursuing their cycles of action and reflection, just as each of the evangelists did in their turn. It’s not all about thinking or saying it right, within orthodoxy and order. It’s also about naming one name, joining the ‘us’ and being in a community of common sense, particular and penultimate.

Was your Jesus a healer? Healing from what, for what? Did he exorcize the possessed? How? Did he start a monopoly, or a franchise, keep intellectual property rights over his bag of tricks? I’ve been asking you to close your eyes and run your Jesus movie. Do you think others are seeing the same film in their mind’s eye? Change the casting and the cutting. Silence your soundtrack, or dub it another language. What kind of Jesus movie do you have now?

This was the last of a series of 5 sermons. I’ve been speaking about Jesus: Unemployed, Bigot, Terrorist, Fool, and now Exorcist. This is the end. Is that a relief – or a bit of a loss? I’ve been preaching about Jesus, trying to challenge our focus on the teachings in our gospels, and in our church, attributed to Jesus. Our liberal church, with its progressive spirit, loves Jesus’ teachings, or at least our version of them. Jesus is our sage, summing up golden rules, and the ten suggestions, as the dominant figure in our denomination. And, I’m arguing, it’s not enough.

God forbid that my epitaph is: ‘he meant well’. ‘You made me think’ is little better. Is that your church and your gospel, a collection of liberal teachings that meant well, or made you think? When you have engaged your Jesus, your faith, your church on a Sunday, has anything changed? Can you hear it? ‘My church doesn’t interfere with my politics, business practice, or religion!’ As Marx wrote on Feuerbach, ‘philosophers try to describe the world. The point is to change it.’

Go on now, and get out there. Go make a difference. Go make common cause, or common sense. God’s up to something. We work with it, or against it, cooperating or resisting, God knows. People who go out there and try to bear that name, part of this community of talk and choice, soon find the limits of their first orthodoxy, and need to shift paradigms, to let suspicions send them around another hermeneutical circle. We’re practicing Christians, not accomplished ones.

Act, reflect, the act again, reflect again, in ongoing conversation with circles of discourse and judgment. Talk with yourself, with God, with the ghosts of those who’ve died, with the whole heavenly host. But don’t just talk. If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly, after all. Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment, doesn’t it? While the unreflective life is not worth living, the unlived life is not worth reflecting upon. What possesses you, or those you meet? Exorcize those demons, and let others try to make change too, claiming the name of Jesus, even if they don’t follow you. God knows we need it all! Read more...