Recounting his visit to Bethlehem Fr. Allen unpacks what he saw that day in light of Isaiah's majestic prophecy and the familiar scene painted by Luke.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined. 3 You have multiplied exultation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as people exult when dividing plunder. 4 For the yoke of their burden and the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. 5 For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire. 6 For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 7 Great will be his authority, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Looking in at the grotto, surrounded by a lot of people from all over, I thought, "Sure, why not, it's grubby enough, it's ordinary enough, this could be it. And if it isn't, well, it's as good a place as any in this city—this city under oppression as it seemingly always has been."
I'm referring to Bethlehem and my experience almost forty years ago, visiting the Church of the Holy Nativity and the very spot, according to tradition, where Mary bedded down and, through the ordeal that is human reproduction, birthed the most consequential human being to have wandered the continents of this planet.
I didn't say the smartest, the most charismatic, the strongest or most attractive, or even the most creative. Just the most consequential.
I was entirely unimpressed as a young man—a theologically uninformed young man—when I paused briefly before the spot and then was relentlessly and inexorably pushed forward and away by the surging crowd and the urgings of the officials.
Indeed at every place in my three months in Israel/Palestine, I was underwhelmed—underwhelmed by the dust and grime of all the holy sites, so ordinary, I came to see in retrospect that they actually "got it."
They actually captured how it is that God glories in ordinary, grotto humans, and by glorying in the ordinary, highlights how everything about us is truly extraordinary.
There were no ski lifts from Schruns and no funiculars. You climbed on foot carrying your skis and higher up, where the snow was too deep, you climbed on seal skins that you attached to the bottoms of the skis . At the tops of the mountain valleys there were the big Alpine huts….The most famous of these high base huts were the Lindauer-Hutte, the Madlener-Haus and the Wiesbadener-Hutte.
—A Moveable Feast
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) lived a life of diverse adventures, but when young, many were the ski trips he did with his 1st wife, Hadley Richardson. Hemingway had a tangential engagement in WWI (served as an ambulance driver and infantryman with the Italian army), but given the fact WWI ended in 1918, Hemingway’s involvement was short-lived, he being only 19 years of age at the time. It was, though, from 1921-1926 that Hemingway and his wife Hadley Richardson (and their son Bumby) lived in Paris, and, when Paris winters were wet and cold, they took to Schruns in Austria to ski. Hemingway and Hadley, when in Parish, hob knobbed with the literary high mucky-mucks such as Stein, Pound, Fitzgerald, Ford, and others, but it was to the winter beauty of the Austrian Alps that they often turned to for oxygen of the soul and literary inspiration (The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway’s breakthrough novel done in drafts when in Schruns). Hemingway, in the final chapter of A Moveable Feast, writes, “We loved the Vorarlberg, and we loved Schruns. We would go there about Thanksgiving time and stay until nearly Easter.”
Ernest and Hadley had begun their skiing days together in Switzerland and Cortina d’Ampezzo in the Dolomites when Bumby was near birth. But, it was to the spacious Montafon Valley in Austria where Ernest and Hadley turned to ski when Paris was not pleasant to live, Schruns and Tchagguns their favourite ski treks. Ernest was in his mid-20s, Hadley in her early 30s in the peak of their ski years, the Hotel Taube in Schruns their winter home. Hadley and Ernest were fortunate, in the early 1920s, that Walter Lent had started a ski school in the area, Lent a disciple and friend of the ski pioneer Hannes Schneider (1890-1955). Lent took them to the high glaciers and superb ski runs, no lifts in those days, treks to the high alpine huts their scenic delights, Madlener-Haus a favourite ski trip. Many of the Austrian huts mentioned by Hemingway are beauties worth the visit as hikes in the summer or ski trips in the white-clothed winter. Hemingway mentioned the dangers of avalanches, his courses in avalanches with Lent and the death of 13 buried (9 killed) in an avalanche when Lent did not heed his own sense of mountain safety and was called a coward for not taking guests from Germany to places he should not have taken them—sadly so, Lent lived to regret his intimidation. Lent’s ski school took a dive afterwards and, in many ways, Ernest and Hadley became his only students. Hemingway makes a gentle dig against the Roman Catholic Church by mentioning a man killed in the avalanche “was refused burial in the consecrated ground by the local priest, since there was no proof he was a Catholic”.
I was young in those days, keen to learn mountain lore, to take to glaciers and snow packed slopes, could ski better than walk, left school before finishing, against my elders’ advice, to live the mountain life, to be far from the madding crowd, early 1970s with mountain sami in northern Norway,
Arnae Naess a north star, Swiss guides my guides.
There were, of course, dangers on peaks, places to be alert and alive to when off piste, when in deep powder.
It was Edward who pioneered avalanche safety in those unsure, untried years, research from Alta Utah our north star, The ABCs of Avalanche Safety (1961) our primer and sacred text on the subject.
Alpine touring in those years was still in its infancy, and it was Edward again that did much of the early work on transceivers when most of us used antiquated means to find a buried friend.
It was in the late 1960s, I was one winter never a day not on skis, traveling the slopes like a mountain gypsy, high ridges and peaks my meccas and New Jerusalem. Was there more to mountain life than skill finesse and the rush of a challenging and steep descent between rocks on all sides?
Dolores, you walked me yet deeper and further, taught me much of the real reasons for mountain life and soul sanity.
Your many books were tender, probing, informed, D. H. Lawrence and Martin Heidegger, deep ecology and mountain soul knit affectionately with soft powder Tai Chi spirituality, the new society and a deeper way of being ever before you.
It was all about future primitive, wisdom of the earth and a return to the mountains.
You parted paths for reasons oft-stated, a sadness I felt, but understood the reasons for—mentors are rare in our time, mountain mentors that remain together rarer still.
You took different trails, took to different peaks, far, far from one another—Edward to a one-room log cabin in Alaska, Dolores in Silverton,
You left us Delores in January 2007. It was kind of you Edward to make the long journey south to attend the funeral to bid adieu to Delores.
Did you realize how the trip would end?
The funeral over and done, you decided, at 80, to do a final deep powder descent. Why? What were you feeling at the time? You died on the mountain Dolores called home.
The thick ropes of mountain memories are not easily shredded or ripped apart.
Alan Dennis, Snow Nomad: An Avalanche Memoir Friesen Press, 2022
Review by Ron Dart
I have had an ongoing interest, the last few decades, in the life and philosophic vision of Dolores LaChapelle. LaChapelle’s early pioneering work with Arne Naess in deep ecology and her deep powder skiing insights were partially birthed when working with her avalanche legend husband, Ed LaChapelle—such a nomad life of sorts both lived in the snowfields of time and avalanche research set them apart as much respected avalanche mentors for many. Ed LaChapelle is mentioned, with due reverence, a few times, in Alan Dennis’ compelling read of an autobiography of sorts, Snow Nomad: An Avalanche Memoir.
Snow Nomad is a fast-paced, quick read of Dennis’ early novice journey into the demanding world of more mature avalanche work, courses few, hard lessons learned on the job as he gradually rose the ranks to become an avalanche expert in BC and other parts of the world. Many of the photographs, sketches, and text tell an honest and raw tale from the perspective of an insider on the layered and complex world of those who live within the avalanche tribe and, as with most families the internal tensions, clashes, and betrayals. This is no romanticized view of mountaineering, skiing, and avalanche life in Canada or in the various places outside of Canada in which Dennis has lived his avalanche vocation.
Alan’s initial journey into the ethos of mountaineering was shaped and informed by his experiences with Outward Bound (when it was in Keremeos) in the early 1970s (I have many found memories of being with Outward Bound in the mid-1970s). Such a key in the ignition with Outward Bound was to take Alan into the larger and fuller world of mountain culture and avalanche safety. His time spent in the Yukon, then to the more demanding challenges of Granduc Mine Road and Bear Pass moved Alan’s avalanche apprenticeship to a higher level. But, it was in New Zealand at Milford Road in the early 1980s (avalanche conditions even more perilous and precarious) that the skills learned, intuition elevated and local insights heeded, that more was internalized about the science-art tension of avalanche safety heightened.
The journey back to Canada and Alan’s leadership role from Revelstoke with the Canadian Avalanche Association/Canadian Avalanche Centre from 1991-1998 is worth many a read (chapter 19)--no punches are pulled, his time a difficult one, the inner dynamics of leadership contested, Alan departing in a trying manner, bureaucrats and consultants often hair shirts of sorts ((chapter 20)---such is often the dilemma when different temperaments and reads of how avalanche safety is to be interpreted collide. A significant number of people in Canada and elsewhere are named in positive and negative ways by Alan as he makes sense of his journey with them in the avalanche clan.
The description of Alan’s time with the Scottish Avalanche Information Service (SAIS) from 1999-2004 and 2008-2011 makes for a mesmerizing read (chapter 24). The time spent in Meager Creek, Adanac Moly, and Coeur Alaska from 2004-2007 reveals yet more about the far-flung avalanche family, his time in Veladero (chapter 30) on the border of Chile and Argentina (camping at 3800 metres, high point on the road 4800 metres) a read that remains with the reader as a nail biter of sorts.
There is much in Snow Nomad that is worth sitting with and reflecting on---few have the sheer breadth and wide-ranging experiences in avalanche work both for the purpose of safe skiing, ski touring, and high mountain passes avalanche safety as does Alan. The accumulated wisdom of such diverse experiences and lessons learned about avalanches both near and far makes this evocative book a definitive primer and must-read for those (regardless of the mountain terrain they live, move and have their being in) who ever need to be aware of the ambiguities of avalanche dangers.
The cover of Snow Nomad with two skiers on a high mountain ridge gazing down on layered snow dunes makes it seem that the book might be about skiing and avalanche safety--not so. The broad approach taken in Snow Nomad covers a wide variety of places and methods used in different weather conditions to, as much as possible, anticipate the deadly nature of avalanches and avoid their tragic consequences.
The style of writing in this charmer of a book is lucidly autobiographical, honest and raw regarding people, organizations and tensions in the leadership of avalanche safety but a sane and sensible breadth permeates each chapter, each step of the journey of mistakes learned from, lessons internalized and insights gained, no silver bullet or snake oil a conclusive answer on how to absolutely avoid avalanches. But, no doubt, this is a beauty and bounty of a book that one and all should own, read and inwardly digest if interested in mountain life and the challenges avalanches present to those who spend time in such places. There can be no doubt, though, that the rich and varied life of Alan Dennis has taken him to places and upped the level of avalanche work and awareness far beyond that of the pioneering life and research of Ed LaChapelle and, to a lesser degree, Dolores LaChapelle.
When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home (John 19: 26-27).
There is a worrisome tendency, amongst some, to project an idealized and romanticized version of the family. Was this the experience of Mary and John? Let us, all too briefly, enter the family realities of both Mary and John, the Biblical text is often lean but suggestive—much, though, can be read between the historical lines.
We know Mary would have been on a difficult journey in which she was frequently misread and misunderstood. The pregnancy would have raised multiple eyebrows, and if not for Joseph’s dream, the pregnancy would have been yet more trying for her. The fact that Roman taxation upped the taxes, meant Joseph and Mary had to leave Nazareth for Bethlehem near delivery time must have been painful—no supportive parents close by when the birth occurred. Was there extended family in Bethlehem after the birth? Where was God in all this? Seemingly absent from a certain perspective! Then there was Herod’s death squads (worst of the Roman military), the slaughter of the innocents, and flight to Egypt—not quite the sanitized and domesticated Christmas we celebrate, religious festivals aplenty, songs and carols, door-to-door caroling, presents opened on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. The 1st Christmas was fraught with uncertainty, ambiguity, and threats from various places and angles—certainly no secure, warm, and predictable few months.
Did Mary and Joseph have extended family in Egypt? And did Mary have other children when in Egypt (church tradition differs on more children or none)? The text is silent on such a question. And, when did Joseph die? How many children did Joseph-Mary have before his death? How did Mary raise the children (if there were more), and more to the pertinent point, how many of her children truly and deeply understood Mary’s internal life and Jesus’ vocation? Much she must have kept quiet within her heart, her honesty often ignored or opposed, questioned, and doubted. What were the years like with Jesus and Mary as he aged and his vision and vocation became more obvious and clearer? And, most of his siblings probably thought his unfolding journey most questionable and dangerous (given Roman occupation and Sanhedrin ideology).
We know James and John were called “sons of thunder”, their lives were, initially, oriented to making a living with nets, water, and fish. How did their families respond when they left their jobs for a vocation? It seems there were, as we read between the lines, tensions with their decisions, mother, father, and siblings thinking such a decision naïve and foolhardy, both men expected to remain near kith and kin to provide for growing families. And, being “sons of thunder” (when young and such a tendency never fully disappearing), what were discussions like when points of differences emerged about Jesus, job, and vocation? Did John, in time, feel less and less comfortable with his blood family? And Mary, much the same?
We know that as the disciples dispersed, John moved to Ephesus, and the Johannine community took root and flourished there, Ephesus being a strategic Greek port city and hub of trading in the Mediterranean. But, for a moment, let us linger with Jesus’ final few words to Mary and John and, perhaps, the reasons for them. John records Jesus’ final words to Mary and himself in John 19:26-27 when Jesus was hanging on the cross. Why did Jesus not ask his siblings (other friends or extended family) to care for Mary? What was it about John’s potentially difficult family (parents and siblings) that Jesus suggested to John Mary was to be his mother? Both Mary and John’s larger blood family, it seems, were not the most sensitive and aware of their deeper vocations and supportive of them. Was there simply indifference, opposition, betrayal? We can only guess and speculate, but we do know as Jesus was hanging on the cross, he understood the sadder story of familial disappointments and lack of siblings' support and understanding. There is much to reflect on in Jesus’ words to John (Mary is to be his mother) and Mary (John is her true son). There is an obvious backstory to such a compassionate concern for both Mary and John. What was the nature of the many discussions Mary and John had with Jesus about their families that led to Jesus’ final acts of concern for them, knowing he would soon depart and life would go on? How would the life of Mary and John go on?
As mentioned above, John and Mary moved to Ephesus, a layered and complex Christian community in existence there (the writer of Revelation 2:1-7 having much to say about the church in Ephesus), John the Abba and Bishop of sorts, Mary his true mother in faith, John her true son on the faith journey. We know, in Ephesus, there remains, as a tourist destination for Christians and Muslims, “The House of Mary” or “Our Lady of Ephesus,” a sacred shrine, certainly worth a visit or a watch on YouTube. What was it like for Mary for John (the beloved) to be her protective and pastoral son? What was it like for John for Mary to be his soul mother? They shared so much history together, such tales to tell about Jesus and the growth of the young church. Needless to say, such a relationship certainly transcended the more natural families of birth. It would be interesting to reflect (evidence slim yet significant) on how John-Mary’s leadership of the church in Ephesus altered direction and pathways after their deaths that gave rise to the warnings of Revelation 2:1-7.
It is significant that in the Greek language and Christian tradition, there are two notions of family. There is the Greek term, oikos, which means one's family of birth or extended families. There is no guarantee such families will be ones of concord, unity, support, and understanding---this was, probably, not the experience of Mary and John. There is also the Greek term, paraoikos, from which we get the notion of the faith family, a version of the family that transcends the natural family—such is the supernatural and eternal family, those whose souls are knit together for a higher and fuller end and journey. We derive our English word, parish (meaning broader area and people who faithfully live within such an area) from such a Greek and Latin word. Mary and John certainly understood the notion of paraoikos on all three levels: supportive soul companion, a faith community in Ephesus and the broader area of which Ephesus formed the geographical and cultural context. But, we also know that the high ideals of the paraoikos can deteriorate and be dimmed, as the vision and warning to the 7 churches in Revelation 2-3 embody. Whose version of the divine family can be trusted? Obviously, a combination of loyalty and criticism must be lived in ongoing tension, some being loyal but not critical, others only loyal to criticism (and its impotent tendencies)
In sum, Mary and John offer a distinctly Christian notion of family that is not necessarily at one with the natural family—such a vision goes much deeper, is more comprehensive but knows the soul suffering of being misunderstood and often betrayed by the natural family—Mary and John have much to teach us if we take the time to sit with them and hear their deeper version and vision of the family that ever grows closer and closer, deeper and deeper, ever maturing like fine wine.
How do we reconcile the fact that the same Dietrich Bonhoeffer whose pacifist sympathies are well known and whose intention to travel to India and visit Gandhi are well documented, joined the Resistance conspiracy to assassinate the German head of state? In two recent books, Mennonite scholar Mark Thiessen Nation and fellow minded colleagues cut the Gordian knot by insisting that if contemporary readers are to encounter the real Bonhoeffer, his role in the Resistance must be significantly calibrated downward, amounting to a ruse crafted by his brother-in-law to keep him from military service. In the process, he served as a pastoral counselor to a few of the conspirators.1 Whether we end up agreeing or disagreeing, Nation raises important questions that invite fresh consideration of Bonhoeffer’s path. This essay will look at some details of Bonhoeffer’s reflections on pacifism and resistance, with special attention to the influence of Karl Barth on his path. I will also look at the implications for our own troubled times as the Church again responds to war in Europe.
Nation’s thesis entails two claims. First, he insists that a close examination of Bonhoeffer’s writings reveals a thoroughgoing commitment to pacifism from which he never departed. Consistent in his reflections on pacifism from 1932, Bonhoeffer made an unequivocal call to peacemaking along with a denunciation of participation in war on the part of Christians. “This sort of witness is typically referred to as pacifism; and Bonhoeffer so labels his own approach.”2 The implication is that any serious participation in the Resistance conspiracy would have amounted to a betrayal of his beliefs. Nation ascribes the usual view of Bonhoeffer the conspirator to reading him through the filter of Reinhold Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer’s American teacher. According to Niebuhr’s Christian Realism, a morally honest confrontation with the horrors of Hitler would compel one to do whatever it takes to stop the perpetrator, assassination included.3 However, if, as Nation gradually came to do, one holds the Niebuhr paradigm lightly and weighs far more heavily Bonhoeffer’s own writings, his role in the Resistance amounts to naught. Nation’s other argument (to be discussed later) is that when it comes to the conspiracy and Bonhoeffer’s role, the historiography of Bonhoeffer’s friend and biographer, Eberhard Bethge, is unreliable.
How shall we assess this reappraisal? Straightaway we should note Nation’s alignment with the across-the-board consensus that the Sermon on the Mount was at the center of Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the Christian faith. In letters to family and friends, he repeatedly asserts the Sermon’s centrality to discipleship. He writes his brother, Karl-Friedrich, “But I do believe I am on the right track, for the first time in my life.... I think I think I am right in saying that I would only achieve true inner clarity and honesty by really starting to take the Sermon on the Mount seriously... The restoration of the church must surely depend on . . . a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount.”4
1 Mark Thiessen Nation, et al., Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis. Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2022), 174, 187. The book includes essays by Stanley Hauerwas and Scot McNight. Cf. also Nation, et al., Bonhoeffer the Assassin? (Baker, 2013) 2 Ibid., 85. 3 Ibid., 3. Here Nation follows Charles Marsh, Strange Glory, (NY: Knopf, 2014), 108. Marsh admits, however, that Bonhoeffer himself never acknowledged any serious theological debt to Niebuhr. 4 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Collected Works, Vol. 13, London: 1933-1935, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), "Letter to Karl- Friedrich Bonhoeffer," Jan. 14, 1935, 284.
It is true that the church is universal and so everywhere, enveloping all creation. The church does not have borders or rails or walls.
I had a friend whose church was the massive entourage of workers that accompanied the global tours of a rock group. Marriages. Baptisms. Loitering. Listening. Word. Presence. Communion. He was their shepherd.
He was grateful for a friend who called his flock a church. He told me so.
My wisest friends in the Eastern churches tell me we can never say where the church is not, only where it is.
Lately, it’s become fashionable to say that the church is not in buildings with pews and altars and pulpits. And I understand the inexcusable beliefs and the practices, abuses, and harms that lead to such convictions.
I still see the church in unusual and unexpected places, like AA meetings and bars, and I celebrate its presence everywhere two or more are drawn by the human God.
And, God forgive me, I still see the church in its institutions. The Spirit of God is not limited by our judgments against one another or our experiences or our bad theology.
The Spirit falls and moves in places we judge as dead or broken or irredeemable.
Humility teaches us to love every gathering of God’s people for God loves them.
This is not a counsel to settle for anything less that the goodness and mercy, the beauty and justice, of Jesus Christ.
We welcome the fire of his restorative works that will eventually make of us gods, beginning with our own house, but we do not say where the church is not.
Since we are going to be discussing corporatism and commonweal in various contexts, we should say something about these two concepts. Corporatism is a basic principle of fascism. It seeks to curtail individualism, not in the context of commonweal – the common good – but in the sense of top-down control and order in society. It seeks to organise society into a hierarchy of corporate [not to be confused with capitalist corporations] structures that require conformity, severely limiting or even curtailing altogether individualistic liberties and actions.
This structured hierarchy corporatises behavioural norms according to a given ideology. Every aspect of society can be corporatised in order to produce a culture conforming to a given ideology. Education, religion, morality, and every external form of behaviour must be regulated in order to impose this ideological concept in a matrix interpretation of the "norm." This corporate structure is imposed and enforced by an arbitrary system of law.
Such a system falls under a general ideology known as “fascism.” It can be a secular civil construct or a heavily moralistic religious arbitrary “theocratic” construct.
There are other understandings and levels of corporatism, but we are using the ideological concept outlined above, which is the general form used to create a fascist society, usually with a deformed and corrupted variation of crony capitalism which curtails individualism and individual creativity of a new form which might interfere with the centrally controlled structure of social order and economic structures.
While Canada was originally shaped with the "Red Tory" idea of commonweal as opposed to a radical, self-centred individualism, commonweal is understood as "the common good expressed within a political system of democracy and individual liberties." In this system, capitalism is regulated only to the degree that is necessary for stability, justice, and fairness. Civil society is also regulated as little as possible while ensuring such things as equal healthcare for everyone and a regulated social safety net that provides for the commonweal, the common good, for the whole of society without impinging upon civil liberties but ensuring the greatest scope of civil liberties that are permitted in a peaceful and cohesive society. This presupposes freedom in such realms as religion and reasonable concepts of morality, a variety of political parties within a cohesive and democratic nationhood. The operational ideology in such a society is "democracy and the greatest scope of civil liberties as can be afforded in a united and orderly culture." In Canada, this is well expressed in The Canadian Charter. We will be mainly interested in discussing the idolatry of corporatising religion and morality, the idolatry and blasphemy of an ideological, arbitrary authoritarian “theocracy.”
Within these concepts, there are variations, of course, but these are the concept within which we are writing. Having established this framework, let us continue.
Perhaps at the root of the problem is a misunderstanding about ekonomia.
The concept is that when "akrivia" [the strict application of a canon or doctrine] might actually hinder someone's salvation–or even emotional and mental health– we apply economy, which is really the opposite of akrivia [strictness].
Allowing remarriage after a divorce is a clear example, and is especially necessary for young people who are not able to tightly control their sex drive.
Another example is when we receive people and to the Orthodox Church through chrismation if they have been baptized in a trinitarian church. Reception by chrismation does not become the "principle" but rather is an exercise in economy. The Chrismation would be seen as a form of ordination into the Royal priesthood. We do not thereby declare that the baptism was complete, but we exercise economy for the sake of someone's salvation.
I am not clear about what some people are trying to make of ekonomia.
The economy of our Saviour is really this: we could not on our own recover paradise, in the alienation between man and God, so strictness was set aside, and Christ, in himself, abolished the alienation. Men could not rise up to heaven, so Heaven descended to men.
I don't know what convoluted twist some people are trying to make of this. Our Christian social programme should be the Beatitudes and the moral imperatives given by Jesus Christ.
We are far off the track when we understand "justice" in a juridical sense and do not understand it as "balancing matters," restoring the balance in nature and the balance in the relationship between God and Man.
Ekonomia simply means "relinquishing strictness in order to facilitate salvation."
We also have to extend that to matters where strictness would mentally and emotionally damage a person. That has to be the only real definition of "social economy."Ekonomia can only be understood in the context of soteriology.
The Parables of our Lord are the most beautiful and meaningful talks in history. They are matchless in their depth. While the great third-century theologian Origen and the fourteenth-century poet Dante said that there were four levels of interpretation, G K Chesterton (the English Roman Catholic essayist from a century ago) said that he could count, in the Lord’s Parables, at least seven levels of meaning.
There’s no doubt about that.
Still, the Parables are simple and immediate. They “come at you” with personality, with familiar experiences, and concrete images. In style and approach, these are not like St Paul’s epistles, which are filled with doctrinal and propositional presentations.
No, parables are meant to be experienced as stories, first and foremost. While one is meant to take St Paul’s epistles, and the Lord’s addresses (like the Sermon on the Mount), with every sentence as a proposition, the parables are different.
No matter how deep they are, the Parables of the Lord are always fresh, ever new.
With parables, one has to look for the moral of the story, which usually comes at the very end. Then, one reads that moral back into the story, and the whole thing opens up in depth and clarity.
This is important. It should be easy to tell the difference between a parable and a doctrinal exposition, because the simple experience of the two is sharply different. An exposition proceeds by logical argument, point by point.
But a parable proceeds by the building up of drama in the narrative. The listener or reader is meant to be “hooked in,” his attention focused on the characters and the chain of events. And then the crisis of the story and the climax, and the conclusion where everything is made clear.
The main point
I propose to read with you the great Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. We will try to pay attention to the story, and to look for the “main point,” the moral of the parable. What was the Lord’s main intent in telling this story? What does the whole parable say, the whole narrative? What is the main concern of this Scripture?
These questions differ from the unfortunately common attempt to construct a dogma about the afterlife out of details from the story. I understand that a number of writers in Holy Tradition have made inferences from this parable, and they have taken from the story a number of eschatological propositions.
Some writers in Holy Tradition have taken from this parable some difficult, if not unfeasible, eschatological interpretations: they teach that the angels take up the souls of the righteous to the “bosom of Abraham” … that the souls of the unrighteous are sent to torment in the fires of Hades … that there is an uncrossable chasm between the bosom of Abraham and Hades.
In general, such writers like to see this parable as referring to the “intermediate state of the soul” – that is, the bodiless existence of the soul in the interval between physical death and the general resurrection at the Last Day.
Such an interpretation is a difficult case to make. For one thing, it is attempting to force out a literalistic reading of a parable, which is a perilous thing. But at the same time, these same writers interpret “the bosom of Abraham” in this parable as symbolically referring to the intermediate state of the soul in fellowship with Christ. So already, the strict “literalistic” interpretation is left behind.
But also, it is plain, for any reasonable eye to see, and any open heart, that parables must be taken in a literary sense, not literalistically. Stories are full of symbol and metaphor. They rely on rhetorical tropes like overstatement (hyperbole) and understatement (litotes). Everyone knows that in Aesop’s Fable, the fox moaning over sour grapes is not mainly about a fox denouncing grapes simply because he couldn’t get at them, but about an all-too-human and all-too-common defect.
Everyone knows that Jesus really did not expect someone to literally pluck out his eye because it offended them.
The media has legitimately focused on the plight of women in the theocratic state of Iran and the aggressive nature of Russia in the tragic Russian-Ukrainian War over the last few months.
I was on staff with Amnesty International in the 1980s (before I was hired at Fraser Valley College) and was the point person for a variety of states in the Middle East that were known as violators (in various ways and means) of elementary and fundamental human rights.
I had previously worked on a PhD thesis on Martin Buber and the political implications of his classic philosophic book I and Thou and its political implications for Jews in Germany and Palestine-Israel from the 1920-1960s. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have stated in recent publications, in an unequivocal way, that Israel now constitutes an “Apartheid State.”
We do know that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney eventually convinced President Ronald Reagan that South Africa was an apartheid state, and the acted on it. The West acted decisively on the apartheid nature of South Africa; why not Israel?
I recently received an email from Israel from a student who graduated from UFV in the Adult Education program more than a decade ago. He was on his 3rd trip to Israel and spent time in Nablus in Balata Refugee Camp—such a sad and painful place to see and, for those who live there, where apartheid is most obvious. Those who have visited and lingered long in Palestinian refugee camps cannot but sense the suffering of decades.
This past Spring season, one of our finest POLSC students finished his M.A. and Ph.D. at Exeter University (probably at the higher end of Middle Eastern Studies in the UK).
Colter Louwerse worked closely with Ilya Pappe—at the forefront of Jewish revisionist thinking on the demolition of multiple Palestinian villages that brought into being Israel in 1948. Much of Colter’s work was on the UN, Israel, and the Palestinians—he is now doing more work on Canada, Israel, and the Palestinians.
It is somewhat significant that it has been historic Tories in Canada (see Heath Macquarrie’s Red Tory Blues and “The Stanfield Report”) that have questioned the structural nature of Israeli politics in regard to the Palestinians and the living conditions of many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem, refugee camps in nearby Muslim states, and the illegal proliferation of Jewish settlements.
Our present Prime Minister, in principle and rhetoric, often claims to be a human rights defender. But he does or says little to oppose the state of Israel, and when minimally inching in such a direction, the language of antisemitism is employed as a rhetorical way of silencing critical questions. It is important to note that Trudeau’s major fundraiser is from the wealthy pro-Israeli Bronfman family.
We might ask why Iran and Ukraine receive so much attention while the ongoing structural injustices in Israel go consistently ignored (except, of course, when there is a momentary violent flare-up). The deeper reasons for such violence often ignore the immense disparity between how many Jews and Palestinians live. The historic underlying causes are often ignored by the media as they tend to focus on the immediacy of symptoms.
Likewise, the death of the Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, by the “morality police” must be protested (and the way women have been treated in Iran). It is noteworthy, though, that the West conveniently ignored human rights violations when the Shah (who the West supported) was in power in Iran.
The West backed another human rights violator (Hussein in Iraq) to oppose the Iranian theocracy until Hussein foolishly attacked Kuwait in 1990. But, the attention given to Amini misses the fact that a significant Palestinian journalist (Shireen Abu Akleh) was killed in May in the West Bank while covering Israeli violence in the city of Jenin. Amini is a martyr of sorts, and her cause has been given ample media coverage, but we hear relatively little about the death of Shireen Abu Akleh.
There is, in short, not only the way the structural politics of apartheid play out in Israel but also the way western media panders to some martyrs and ignores others. Is this not yet another form of apartheid?
It is somewhat noticeable at the 2022 FIFA World Cup that although some issues of human rights have been raised, the Israeli-Palestinian issue is predictably absent. Media apartheid works at many levels, where the sacrificial lambs are often Palestinians in the West and, to the East, their Sunni brothers and sisters in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Dr. Colter Louwerse will be giving a lecture Tuesday November 29 (4:00-5:30: A225 Abbotsford Campus) on “The Struggle for Palestinian Rights at the United Nations.”
Bradley Jersak's Out of the Emberscaught me by surprise. I thought my time to look back was done. At the beginning of this year, over a whole month, I experienced a creative miracle where, by the end, I knew God had healed my PTSD. Within the pages of Bradley's book, I can feel more waves of release and healing.
From the “Prodigal Test”
“God gives us the dignity of finding our own bottom. Once that happens, we might truly come home in a way that the elder brother apparently never did.”
It’s taken me days to get through the sections on Nietzsche and Simone Weil. Within those pages, I revisited the worst days of my deconstruction, primarily the grief that had consumed me.
I never said “God is dead” but some nine years ago, the second part of my deconstruction came as what I can only call a wrecking ball. I remember the moment it happened. I was in church, mic in hand, about to blissfully share some grace encouragement. And before I could get a word out, God popped my bubble. It was like I had rose-coloured glasses on... and then I didn’t. All I could see were faces in the pews who were not interested in my wonderful grace words. They were suffering silently in a place where suffering was not allowed, or at least not talked about. Ours was a toxic positivity church of happy grace clappers, and I was one of them. I put the mic down, grabbed my husband and my children, and ran like a madwoman. I never went back.
Immediately after, my mum was diagnosed with cancer. She was in Greece with my dad and my brother, so the family flew her and my dad back to Australia.
She survived another six weeks. I prayed for more time with her; I prayed for her healing, and when it became evident that that was not going to happen, I prayed that I would be there with her when she took her last breath. I lay on the floor next to her bed so as to be with her. It was important to me because we hadn’t had a great relationship when I was growing up. I was a terrible teenager. But for years, I had longed to live close to her and to have the opportunity to love on her as she deserved. To make up for lost years.
The moment my mumma took her last breath, she was surrounded by her whole family. Except me. I was on the toilet.
My faith at that moment collapsed. The wrecking ball hit with no mercy. Didn’t we learn in church that "all God’s promises were yes and amen" and that He gives us the desires of our hearts? Not only did God no answer the desire of my heart that I had hoped and prayed for over many years, but He took Mum home while I was on the toilet, shitting. It was like He had taken a knife, jabbed me in my heart, and twisted it to drive it home. I wasn’t angry with God; I was deeply hurt. I felt like the only One who I could trust had hurt me in the worst possible way. I can’t describe the pain in my heart.
One morning after her funeral, I got in my car to go to work, and I said out loud, “God, you and I are done.Don’t talk to me anymore. I won’t be looking to hear from you or to feel you. I won’t be in any relationship with you. I won’t be loving you and certainly won’t be waiting to receive any love from you. You can leave me alone now.”
I said it and I meant it. I would repeat this many, many times over the next two years when I was alone. For the first time in my whole life, I stopped talking to God. I didn’t question his existence. I knew He was real and I knew He was with me all the time. But I chose deliberately not to be in relationship with Him.
Still, my mumma’s death was not my rock bottom. It happened over the two years of ripping my heart out day after day. It was the numbing myself and not allowing myself to love and be loved by the God who had once swept me off my feet.
My rock bottom came when I had so shut myself off from God out of deep hurt that I could no longer feel Him. I don’t know how to describe living without God except to say I felt dead. I starved myself to death. I went about my days mechanically. No joy; just deep, deep sadness and inconsolable grief for my loss. I cut myself off from whatever few friends I had left because I somehow felt like my darkness would contaminate them, plus there was no room in my despair.
Two years passed. My hubby Brett and I were driving a long distance and he had his music playing on random. What used to be my all-time favourite God song came on: Lifehouse's “Everything.”
Find me here and speak to me I want to feel you, I need to hear you
I started to cry and Brett asked what was wrong. I told him that the hardest thing for me, doing this life without God, has been that I’m no longer moved by Him. Every time I used to hear this song, it was like every cell in my body would be caught up into some ecstatic place of joy indescribable but now I am not moved by Him anymore. Brett laughed and said, "Well, that’s an easy fix! You just have to let Him."
And so I prayed, “Lord I miss you, I still feel hurt by you, but Lord, if you never answer a single prayer of mine it doesn’t matter. If I see no miracles but only pain and suffering in this world, nevertheless, I don’t want to do it on my own anymore. There’s no life for me apart from you. I need you, and I want to be moved by you again."And so He did. Once again, I fixed my eyes on the Lover of my soul for no other reason than to be loved and to love.
Reading Embers today, specifically Simone Weil's words about coming home, God reminded me of a recurring nightmare I used to have after my mum had passed. In the dream, my mum and I were lost and both of us trying to find our way home. Somewhere in the dream, I would lose her and desperately try to find her so we could find home together. The dream would always end before I found her and before we found home.
Today, God spoke to me about how my mumma suffered from terrible grief in her life, something she never got over. Both my sister and I would say we don’t ever want to be like her, always grieving. For my sister, it stopped her from being able to grieve. And for me, I seemed to grieve immensely. I felt God saying, “Your mumma is home now with me and she no longer grieves. And you know I am always with you, and I am healing this grief."
I think I read somewhere that Out of the Embers is like the healing balm of Gilead. Indeed it is. I know it will bring much healing to many.
In the ongoing, too often overheated, discussion of Christian universalism, here are some notes that might be helpful, especially in avoiding unnecessary runs down the garden path.
Universalism does not discount the possibility of hell -- just its co-eternity with God. Any such experience is not retributive, but purgative, therapeutic & educational.
Hell, or purgation, is not inflicted, but arises from the attempt of the self to oppose God's Love -- hence, it is the self revoking its own essence, which is to desire God's Love.
Universalism is not opposed to human freedom, as is often suggested. Rather, human freedom is preserved and protected by the eternal persuasion of divine love, as proclaimed and embodied by Christ.
To say that Jesus shall eventually surmount all & every refusal -- even the devil's -- is hardly an abrogation of freedom, but rather a vindication of Love & the "freeing" of freedom in theosis.
There is a difference between "aeon" (indefinite time, an age) and "eternity" (timelessness). The NT uses the former with regard to purgation, & reserves the latter only for God.
The interval of purgation may be long indeed. In fact, the "eternity" to which anti-universalists refer is probably this long interval, as they cannot conceive of eternity proper.
The notion that God would actively inflict retribution upon His creature, or that God would allow endless perdition (or annihilation), cannot be supported by apophatic or divine absolute-ness.
The difficulty of God's nature as love being also a despot that wages eternal wrath is more than the clay questioning the potter. That such conflation is utterly incoherent is a mark of the image of God that will not countenance such absurdity. "My thoughts are higher than your thoughts" is a statement of infinite transcendence, not discontinuity. That the thought of eternal punishment is (or should be) offensive is a sign that humanity has received God's revelation of His nature.
It is legitimate, even necessary, to interpret Scripture and Tradition under the rubric of moral coherence. Doing so is precisely the work of "the Spirit leading into all truth," a continuation of Jesus' hermeneutical instruction on the road to Emmaus.
Hermeneutics cannot avoid being essentially theological. Thus, one must interrogate the motives for defending the notion of eternal hell & divine retribution. What does such infernalism enable? What psychological & sociological structures are founded upon it?
It is likely that the old notion that eternal hell was necessary for evangelism & discipline was never valid. It is the knowledge of the Father through the Son glorified by the Spirit that leads to repentance & theosis. Alone. Nothing less.
It is true that since Constantine and Augustine, the majority of Christian leaders & writers seemed to think of Hell as unending torment, with no hope of change. But it is at least probable that before these two figures, the majority of Christians were universalists.
Universalism as above has not been condemned as heretical by Eastern Orthodoxy, despite the common assumption that the 5th Ecumenical Council had done so (which it did not), & despite some local anathemas saying so. Anathemas are not dogma & are often flawed.
Universalism produces a highly Christological eschatology. Christ reigns through the kenotic Spirit, exorcising the demonic, destroying sin and death, until everything is in voluntary and joyous submission.
This universal submission (with no remainder) of Philippians 2.9-11 is a free, loving, and saving submission. It is the perfecting of the person, vs the annihilation of person in despotic oppression.
The reign of Christ, in the actualization of "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done on earth" is the "exorcistic" campaign of the Body of Christ against the antichrist structure. The demonic is constantly being evicted from the material realm. Permanently.
"Until I make Your enemies Your footstool." When sin and death are finally destroyed, when all "sinners are made no longer sinners," as Basil the Great said, then "God will be all in all."
It is inconceivable then that any should remain "sinner," after "Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire" (Rev 20.14). This verse is the goal of Christ's reign, the destruction of sin and death.
The lake of fire is the very fire St Paul describes in 1 Cor 3.15 -- the fire that burns up sin and death, but "he will not suffer loss, but saved as through fire." This is refinement, this is therapeutic. The sinner is made "not a sinner."
To suggest any other purpose for fire is to suggest another nature of God, and to diminish eschatology, and finally -- if Hell is made eternal, then the Lord is made to fail.
Baby Hitler, Time Travel, and Retributive Justice (excerpt from Jason Clark, Leaving and Finding Jesus
The other day, at a party, I played the time-travel game with friends, which eventually became an in-depth conversation about justice, as all time-travel games do.
You know how it goes. Someone in the room starts the game by asking, “If you could go back in time just once, what would you do?”
After several obvious statements about buying stock in Apple and Google, and after the obligatory Flux Capacitor reference, and a joke about avoiding that street taco in Mexico City, and how I regret the hour and a half I gave to the movie God Is Not Dead, someone, let’s call her Angela, got altruistic and asked the question, “What about baby Hitler? Would you kill baby Hitler?”
There it is—a thoroughly enjoyable conversation hijacked. Suddenly the lives of over 70 million people are in our hands. Before I can say anything, there is always one guy, let’s call him Dwight, who blurts out too quickly, “Absolutely, wouldn’t think twice.”
Then Angela says what everyone is thinking, “But Dwight, he’s an innocent baby.” Everyone nods thoughtfully as the conversation stumbles into a debate about morality and innocence.
Then, Dwight clears his throat, “While infants are born morally innocent, since it is impossible for them to be born any other way, all men have chosen to be sinners from their youth, so…”But everyone in the room quickly yells down Dwight’s internet-stolen, sin-counting diatribe, even before he could retrieve the Scripture verse he’d memorized to prove his case.
Why? Simply put, this party is made up of people who have neither bought into total depravity nor approached Scripture transactionally in years. Also, anyone who has ever held a baby or has even a spark of a soul, knows there is no Scriptural minutia or moral manipulation that justifies killing one.
Even Dwight knows this, if he’d just shut up long enough to think about it.
Then someone, let’s call him Kevin, voiced a brilliant idea, “We can go further back and kill Hitler’s abusive father!”
For a moment, everyone sighs in relief. The problem appears solved until, of course, someone else—let’s call her Pam—asks a new but obvious question. “But why was Hitler’s father so abusive?”
Dwight nods decisively and then states the next obvious conclusion, “We’re gonna have to go even further back and kill Hitler’s grandfather.”
And there it is! Time travel exposes the flaws of retributive justice like nothing else.
You see, Hitler’s father was once an innocent baby, and so was Hitler’s grandfather, and so on, and so on. The problem with the type of “justice” that advocates retribution is that it creates a cycle of injustice, a cycle of child sacrifice, and the loss of innocence.
The kill-baby-Hitler-to-save-humanity time-travel-game? It doesn’t end until we have traveled all the way back to Adam. Then, of course, we realize that Jesus already did this at a cross—except Jesus didn’t go all the way back to Adam to kill him, and He didn’t go back seeking retribution. No, He went all the way back to Adam to restore, heal, transform, reconcile and make him whole.
“Father, forgive them,” Love said as He transcended time and space.
“It is finished,” Love whispered as He reconciled the beginning and the end, the before and the after, the in-between and the forevermore.
The fact is, the kill-baby-Hitler-to-save-humanity time-travel game doesn’t work, because retribution is a distortion of justice. Retribution is simply the fruit of an earlier injustice.
I’d like to suggest that a retributive understanding of justice is too small because it only focuses on the moment of injustice. It is a finite punishing approach to sin that condemns for eternity.
Conversely, Jesus, on a cross, revealed God perfectly as reconciling love, which is measureless and timeless. And so, reconciling love is the ultimate time traveler. He exists in every moment, all at once.
Therefore, His justice spans the entirety of our days, as well as everything before and everything after.
You see, bullies have been bullied, oppressors have been oppressed, and Hitler had an abusive father. Therefore, God’s justice must be expansive enough to restore and reconcile the bullied and the bully, the oppressed and the oppressor, the abused and the abuser, the five-year-old and the fifty-year-old, because, over the course of time, it’s the same person.
If justice isn’t about restoration, it isn’t justice. It’s revenge. And while most of the world is obsessed with that Tarantino flick, and while much of the Western church seems devoted to that atonement theory, retributive justice is nothing like Jesus.
The fact is, since before the beginning and after the end, God has always been and will always be like Jesus—there is no love that is greater.
Jesus, Measureless Love, before the very foundations of the world and after the sun has set, is on a cross demonstrating and delivering justice by laying His life down for His friend and restoring and reconciling all things. And that same Jesus is also risen! And from Him, and through Him, and for Him are all things.
Suddenly, another fella at the party—let’s call him Jim—has a brilliant thought and says it out loud, “What if God’s justice is better than we think it is? What if God’s justice is restorative? What if we partnered with Him in this type of justice? What would that mean for our families, churches, cities, and nations? What could that look like in our world?”
“That’s a good thought, Jim!” I replied. “Maybe the next time we all get together at a party, we should play that time travel game.”
Excerpt from, Jason Clark, Leaving and Finding Jesus
Journeys to an Unholy Land (Olive Branch Press, 2022).
Review by Ron Dart
The title of this timely, autobiographical, and not to be missed book tends to confront the reader with a challenge. There is a predictable tendency to think of “Glory to God in the Highest” and, for those interested in the Jews, the Bible and Christian sacred sites in Israel, as “Journeys [often selective] to the Holy Land.” But, Wagner will not allow us such a luxury or indulgence—we are invited, in fact, to visit the lowest, some of the most structurally oppressed in Israel that are often seen by the naïve as the Holy Land. How, though, did Wagner come to the telling and challenging conclusions he did? Such is the pith and core of this finely told and textured book.
Glory to God in the Lowest is a tale told in 6 compelling sections: 1) Beginnings, 2) Moving on Up While Downwardly Mobile, 3) Journeys to the Unholy Land, 4) Doctor, My Eyes Have Seen the Pain, 5) Palestine is Still the Issue and 6) Liberating Your Mind: Zionism, Christian Zionism and Resistance. Each of the chapters tells, in a needful manner, the nature of Wagner’s journey from American conservative evangelical beginnings (none of us decide on our thrownness) with its uncritical, almost hagiographical attitude to Israel, to a seeing of the injustices in the USA to connecting American racial issues with the situation of the Palestinians in Israel. Wagner has made many a trip to Israel, met and worked with many Palestinians, published a few books on the issue, lectured widely on the American-Israeli Zionist connection, worked with organizations that deal with the troubling and persistent dilemma and tells a different resistance story in Glory to God in the Lowest.
Each of the chapters, section by section, unpacks both Wagner’s political faith journey as theological vision turns more in a prophetic direction from a passive and conformist one both within how he understands his origins in the USA and the relationship of the USA (and the many Christians within it) to Judaism and Israel. How does one dare to critique Israel, the oft opposition using the language of anti-semitism when done? Wagner is acutely aware that many religious and secular Jews are opposed to Zionism but many Jews and Christians genuflect to the Zionist ideology. How does one break the spell of Jewish and Christian Zionism, Wagner more, rightly so, concerned with the latter rather than the former (although the two are inextricably intertwined)?
Sections 1-2 in Glory to God in the Lowest prepare the reader (given Wagner’s unfolding journey) for sections 3-6 with their decided focus on certain types of Christianity that merge interpretations of the Bible with pro-Zionist and pro-Israeli conclusions. The final section sums up the needed for a “Liberating Your Mind” counter-cultural approach to the issue. And, not to miss, of course, is the many family photographs at the end of the book, “Endnotes” worthy of a slow internalizing.
Glory to God in the Lowest is an imperative read for those interested in how the mind can be imprisoned by a limited read and application of the Bible to the (Un)Holy Land—if an awakening is needed, if liberation is the goal, then Wagner’s personal yet searching insights in this book are an antidote to a worrisome slumber that breeds much injustice and distorts the meaning of peace.
Editor's Note: The following is a manuscript of Felicia Murrell's talk from the Open Table Event, in conversation with Wm. Paul Young.
FELICIA MURRELL
I want to begin by saying this is not an easy ask.
For me, AND is the bridge to our re-turn, our homecoming, turning once again to ourselves, to Divine Love and to one another. For me, I’m holding both individual responsibility to participate with the Divine in our integration AND collective activism in a world that is a conflux of bodies in different states/stages of being who are responsible for the systems, bureaucracy and structures that inhibit the livelihood and flourishing of all bodies.
Racism IS most definitely systemic. AND the fear, insecurities and incorrect interpretation of “subdue the earth” which has led to a patriarchal obsession with dominance (of people, places, creation, and things) is very much a heart issue that has to be transformed through an experiential knowledge of Love.
Dualism does not resolve tension; it only furthers the divide.
Yes, there are laws that can be changed. But even with more equitable policies of the 90s, poverty and mass incarceration, and wage and wealth gaps abound.
How helpful are laws if people’s hearts are not transformed? It only means that when power changes, laws change. One only has to look to our Supreme Court to see this at play.
I don’t want to get into a tug of war of facts or statistics so I’m resisting the urge to lean on a lot of data and history. Often we wield information to attempt to convince or sway someone. “There has always been...” is too often used to dismiss what is. And I don’t want to get into a game of comparing suffering or domination stories.
Information does not create transformation.
We have to trust Spirit for the part we as a society can’t do, which is heart transformation.
If hell is a state of mind created by the illusion of Love’s absence, then perhaps heaven is the awareness of the Divine within and our intentional participation with Love.
How does participating with Love aid in alleviating fear - society’s and my own?
Much time has passed since George Floyd was murdered. Since books by Black people rocketed to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list. Since corporations made anti-racist statements declaring Black Lives Matter and people turned their social media profiles black in solidarity with the suffering.
What has changed? In you, in me, in the world... What has changed?
Did we rush too quickly to fix, to absolve ourselves of discomfort? To avoid the pain caused by a long history of messes made, realities ignored. Did we learn how to be sad together, to grieve with or just be? To allow the weight of the moment to be its own masterclass. Or have we rushed in brandishing our savior capes to plant a chair over the poop so our houses have an appearance of ordered cleanliness regardless of the smell?
Have we really slowed down enough to hear in the time that has passed since George Floyd was murdered? In that span of time, have we made space for people to vent and unburden their insides without crowding out discomfort, theirs and ours?
Can we name the most marginalized persons or people group in our local area, community, state, region and the nation? What are their concerns? What are their fears? What does their heart cry sound like? What legislative and civic changes need to be addressed to ensure they are empowered to live?
Pus draining from old wounds is a necessary thing to stave off infection. But not everyone can tolerate open sores.
Phobias and -isms have no place in the labor of Love. To that end, when we talk about restoration, transformation, I want to know who is actively and intentionally participating with the Divine in healing and liberation. Who are those unfazed by gore and know how to love with strong stomachs?
Who has learned to handle the gruesome, to sit in the discomfort of their own pain, to allow space for others to live in theirs?
As a child of the South, I lived in the fear that dripped from my family’s muscle memory. A fear that ordered my coming and going, my way to be in the world. Demanding that I be small, invisible. That I shrink myself to the tiniest possible existence so I wouldn’t be next. The next one to die. The next one to be raped or maimed.
Even when the white hooded robes made its way to the back of people’s closets and lynching and cross burning were no longer a thing, in the South we knew there were still ways to be lynched, still ways to be railroaded. Still police willing to carry out long-held beliefs.
Today, as an adult, access to safety is still a constant I carry with me. I’m Googling “is this town safe for black people.” I have to consider inflamed racial and political climates when deciding where to live, where to travel, where to shop. There are certain towns that are still unsafe for Black people at night even though sundown towns are supposedly no longer a thing.
“Wait a minute!” One day I may not be so surprised and delighted by the books Plough Publishing sends me, but they’ve done it again! Before I dive into the substance of Clarence Jordan’s Inconvenient Gospel, I must first commend Plough from a publisher’s perspective. The design and layout of the physical copy make for a beautiful product, bound on good-quality stock and a heavier-than-paper cover. More important, though, is that this particular book is a welcome addition to their “Spiritual Guides” series, which is a treasury of authors including:
Dorothy Day
Simone Weil
Eberhard Arnold and Richard Foster
Eberhard Arnold and Thomas Merton
Oscar Romero
Amy Carmichael
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Seriously, contact Plough and ask for the whole set—it’s an incredible collection of great hearts and minds, and each work includes a distilled biography and introduction along with a treasury of primary source material from each author.
Now to Clarence Jordan's Inconvenient Gospel. The book opens with Frederick L. Downing’s fine biography of Jordan (1912-1969), his wife Florence, and their Koinonia community. Jordan is described as a white Baptist minister from Old South Georgia who broke every mold associated with that stereotype. The “Wait a minute!” moments on those first pages stack up quickly. Here we have a Southern Baptist-trained preacher (with a Ph.D. in NT Greek) who embraced nonviolence, racial integration, and communal living decades before the Civil Rights movement picked up steam! Utterly countercultural, monitored by the government, harassed by the Klansmen… his story is so gripping that when Martin Luther King Jr. heard Jordan was practicing what King was preaching, he said, “I went to Koinonia [Jordan's community] to see it for myself and couldn’t wait to leave because I was sure the Klan would show up and kill us both.” The Koinonia project, a gospel-centered, interracial, alternative economic project, struck me exactly as the title suggests—an “inconvenient Gospel.”
After Downing’s biography, readers are treated to an Introduction by Starlette Thomas, titled “Reading Clarence Jordan Today.” Wait a minute! THAT Starlette Thomas? For those unfamiliar with her, Thomas is the director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative; she's a practical theologian and blogger, and a serious womanist preacher in ministry. When someone of her stature shares her perspective on Clarence Jordan and his “raceless gospel” (not to be confused with “color-blindness”!), I am arrested in the most important way. I.e., she had my attention.
But then we’re exposed to Clarence Jordan firsthand in a series of thirteen of his articles and sermons. It's worth sharing the chapter titles to catch a glimpse of key themes from this “wait a minute!” provocateur. I'm especially bearing in mind the religious and social cultures of his Baptist audiences (churches, journals, and conventions from 1941-1955) and later, his Mennonite listeners (Goshen College) in the 1960s.
Impractical Christianity
The Meaning of Christian Fellowship
What is the Word of God?
White Southern Christians and Race
No Promised Land without the Wilderness
The Ten Commandments
Jesus, Leader of the Poor
Love Your Enemies
Jesus and Possessions
Metamorphosis
The Man from Gadara
Things Needed for Our Peace
The Humanity of God
Through his penetrating messages, Jordan presses some truly inconvenient "wait a minute!" facts. For example, the radical polarization around economic and racial issues that are right now tearing apart our frayed society are nothing new. He was there and underwent that reality directly, overtly, frequently suffering intimidation from the church, the FBI, and the KKK alike.
Further, his active opposition against white supremacy before the Civil Rights reached a critical mass was prophetic and intensely risky. Hatred from what we now call the “far right” was still the norm then,… and couple that problem with preaching a gospel of nonviolence that refused to hate domestic oppressors or wage war against foreign enemies. Well, call him crazy, call him communist, call him the devil... and many did. But we cannot call his nonviolence "complicity with injustice." His nonviolent witness was an active living martyrdom... as dangerously naïve as Jesus' foundation sermon, perhaps? I hope so, because so far, “the ways that make for peace have been hidden from our eyes.” Jordan has a word for us all, right now. He IS a prophet to speaking to the 21st century.
But even if I can follow his call to radical forgiveness, enemy love, and anti-racism, that only gets me through the Matthew 5 section of his Sermon on the Mount example. Jordan ventures into the implications of a Matthew 6 life—I’m referring to how seriously he took renouncing personal wealthy and possessions and heeding Jesus’ command [?] not to lay up earthly treasures for ourselves. Jordan preached and practiced a communal gospel reminiscent of the church in those first chapters of Acts, where everyone shared, and no one was left impoverished. "Wait a minute!" That’s a “hard word” for those of us (I mean me) with mortgages and homes, deeply attached to our pensions and investments. Maybe now that middle-class wealth is being gobbled up by inflation and greed, and a home is no longer even an option for my children, Jordan has my attention—and after him, who knows? Might I listen to Jesus, too—but this time with fresh ears in Clarence Jordan’s Southern-seasoned voice.
It's worth saying how closely aligned Jordan was with Tolstoy, Gandhi, Thurman, and King Jr., in that same Sermon on the Mount tradition, living its practicability in his own way. Even without the same global name recognition, he is surely due the same honor as these, his peers.
Finally, one last bonus “Wait a minute!” Have you ever heard of the southern retelling of the Jesus story, The Cotton Patch Gospel? I had not realized Clarence Jordan wrote was the author! In fact, he was composing it when he departed this life for the next. One might have wished he had more time for that endeavor, but then again, what a beautiful way to complete one’s journey.