Thanks to Phil Harrison for the link to the video below which builds on a earlier post about Chris Hedges HERE on the mid-term elections in the US and the collapse of mediating liberalism. This is penetrating stuff and deeply challenging for Christians, and indeed all of us living on this island in the current climate. Am I the only one to be disturbed by the potential for more extreme political parties to make hay, promising the most populist policies for the electorate down South because they know they’ll not have to govern, nevertheless exploiting the nations current traumas for electoral gain? Is this how nations turn to fascism?

Anyway, you may not have 45 minutes to spare to watch this, but allow me to extract the following quotation for your delectation and delight. It’s a challenge to us Christians, particularly those of us with a seminary education.

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The danger when a liberal class breaks down is that there is no mechanism any more by which mounting rage and anger can be expressed within the system…And it is fascinating to go back and read Dostoevsky at the end of the 19^th Century who witnessed a similar breakdown in Russia’s liberal class. “Notes from Underground” is about the defeated dreamer, the cynical liberal, the person who voted for Obama and had so much hope, but the hope was not delivered, and so they retreated into this narcissistic, self-centred, bitter room underground. And Dostoevsky argues that when the liberal class collapses, when the pillars of the liberal establishment no longer function, you enter an age of moral nihilism.

He presciently foresaw the inevitable result of a system that doesn’t work.

Our system doesn’t work, And it doesn’t work, ultimately, not because of Sarah Palin, or the Christian Right or Glenn Beck, it doesn’t work because the liberal class failed us. It failed us because it failed to find the intellectual and moral fortitude to defend liberal values at a time when they were under egregious assault.

I come out of the church, I went to seminary, and I watched the liberal church in the face of the rise of the Christian Right, a movement, essentially by a definition of basic Christianity, a heretical movement, a movement that acculturated the worst aspects of American nationalism, chauvinism imperialism and capitalism into the Christian religion. As if Jesus came to make us wealthy; as if Jesus would bless the dropping of armed fragmentation bombs all over the Middle East; as if the miracles of the Gospel were ones that were going to turn us into millionaires, and they [the liberal Church] said nothing and did nothing. They didn’t respond

Now what’s the point of getting a seminary degree and studying the miracles of Jesus and the Gospels for three years unless you are not willing to go out into the culture and stand for those messages and defend them.

Good question. What is the point? Keeping the sheep quiet ministering to the flock? Not allowing the deeper questions to emerge in a church context thus giving no faith based forum to articulate righteous anger?

Anyway, here’s the full video.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYCvSntOI5s

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Working, as I do, in inner city Belfast it is sometimes hard to see the impinging force of the resurrection in the day to day. Yet there are moments when its light leaks through the cracks. I remember on a Thursday in November, after the clocks had turned and it got dark at 5pm, watching three builders from our construction site, wearing their hi-viz jackets, pushing the stalled car of a woman which was holding up rush-hour traffic. Was that resurrection light resisting the darkness and death of the world? A glorious grace-filled act?

I watch people trying to live dignified lives in the midst of poverty. Hiding their illiteracy. Trying to feed their kids a healthy diet on a low income. Extending the warmth of hospitality to someone normally considered an enemy.

I sometimes think that inner city people wear their lives on their sleeves in ways that would appall us polite suburbanites. We, after all, have large gardens and driveways which separate us from our neighbours and from life on the streets. But do these hard-won, apparent benefits of the successful life also rob us of resurrection moments?

And do they also deny us the capability of encountering incarnation on Christmas Day, with anything like the wonder of the shepherds or of meeting resurrection on Easter Sunday without anything approaching the wonder and power of the disciples and the women?

And does my lack of noticing also mean that I lack the spiritual resources to survive in this bullying world?

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I doubt that I could have had the capability to lately survive radical disease, unremitting pain, and the shadow of death had I not spent those earlier years in the Harlem ghetto, discerned there something of the moral power of death, and learned, from neighbours, clients, and Harlem inhabitants at large, something of the triumph of life that human beings can enter and celebrate despite death’s ubiquity and vitality. Harlem is the scene in which I first comprehended the veracity of the resurrection—and that prepared me, more than any other single thing, for devastating illness and pain. Had I known only what I heard about the resurrection in Sunday School or from pulpits or from within the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant ethos, I believe that I would have surely died…resurrection is verified where rebellion against the demonic thrives.

I do not ignore or gainsay the ambiguity of the witness to the resurrection in revolution. I am, however, affirming that in the black ghetto there is a resistance to death as social purpose, a perseverance in living as human beings, a transcendence of the demonic which is at least an image of resurrection which exposes and challenges the reign of death in this society and which thus, benefits all human beings.
Harlem, Rebellion and Resurrection, Christian Century, 1970

So the life-giving question: where, this Advent, can I encounter rebellion against the demonic?

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I was surprised how easy it all was. No-one suggested there should be a wrench, a tearing. Instead the officials dealt with it all coldly and efficiently. Thirty minutes in a small nondescript office, a couple of signatures and twenty-two years of fidelity and connection were ended. Just like that.

I walked back out onto the wintry Belfast street, filled with frantic shoppers and eager party-goers and weary, homeward bound workers and felt nothing, really.

The truth is, that for most of the twenty-two years we existed comfortably enough together. There were the occasional spiky moments, but nothing that would ever induce a break. I flirted with others, threatened infidelity sometimes, but always came back. Until recently.

For I’ve become utterly sick of your greedy wandering. Your promiscuity. I’m hurt that you eventually just took me for granted while your eye wandered. I have learned in recent years that I was not enough for you. Not exciting enough. I didn’t deliver the thrills, the risk, the breathless returns. I was too safe. It makes me angry to realise that I no longer satisfy you and that this was your excuse to look elsewhere. Maybe it was always this way, but we both lacked the wherewithal to extend our reach. But recent prosperity released your shackles and new friends and relationships promised so much more that I could ever give.

The sense of powerlessness I feel is frightening. You have emasculated me. And in my struggle to articulate what you have done, I have taken the only action left to me, to end the whole thing.

You were my first, you gave me a sense of rootedness in a new place all those years ago, but I no longer need you. I’m in that last generation who entered these relationships believing they were for life. How foolish we were, and how exploited. In this new time, I’m happy to start all over again with someone else. And that’s what I’m doing.

Within a matter of two or three weeks I’ll have a new bank account. It’s not an earth shattering thing. It’s not going to change the economic circumstances of the State, but it gives me back a voice. It allows me to make my own statement.

And it’s goodbye Bank of Ireland.

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Some things are so self-consciously beautiful that they are deeply unattractive. On the other hand, some things wear their beauty so unconsciously, so easily, that they are compelling. Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann fits into the latter category. Quite simply beautiful. I would pick it up to read and find an hour has disappeared without being noticed. The pages slip past as each wonderfully crafted sentence flows over you.

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Sometimes you’ve got to go up to a very high floor to see what the past has done to the present.

The whole story is suspended from the tightrope cable of Philippe Petit, slung between the Twin Towers in 1974. In the city below collisions and connections happen which shape the lives of each character – a aesthetic Irish monk and his aimless brother, mother and daughter prostitutes, a Guatemalen nurse, a husband and wife grieving the loss of their son in the Vietnam war, a woman from the wrong side of the town grieving her similar loss, and a young artist whose marriage is about to reach a crisis because of a tragedy that would connect all parties. Grief leaves its mark, but those who feel it’s cold hand need not be beyond redemption.

Each chapter tells the story of a different character, some in the first person, some narrated. And each one a complete work of art on its own.

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A man high in the air while a plane disappears, it seems, into the edge of the building. One small scrap of history meeting a larger one. As if the walking man were somehow anticipating what would come later. The intrusion of time and history. The collision point of stories. We wait for the explosion but it never occurs. The plane passes, the tightrope walker gets to the other side of the wire. Things don’t fall apart.

And the great world spins. Sometimes, seemingly, out of control, heading towards disaster with no hope of rescue, the walker must fall and be dashed at the bottom, doing untold damage on the way. And sometimes not. The capacity of human beings to rescue one another is remarkable. The skill exercised in staying aloft is incredible.

Nobody falls halfway, says a sign inside the door of Petit’s cabin while he is training for the walk – the exact centre of the novel. He falls once, necessary he thinks to ensure it could never happen again. And it doesn’t. Petit doesn’t put a foot wrong. Not once, suspended above the void between the towers. Not a single misstep.

Like this book.

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Fascinating post a couple of weeks ago from VR offering a critique of comments by an unnamed American preacher (Os Guinness? Tim Keller?) on the ‘priority’ of the church. It’s a fascinating perspective on the ‘social gospel’ as seen from the Global East and a sharp appraisal of the clericalism of Western evangelicalism.

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The Church as the disciple-community of Jesus is called in the Great Commission to obey and teach others “to obey everything that I have taught you”. This is pretty comprehensive! How on earth did this Great Commission get reduced to preaching? Trying to select from the teaching of Jesus what we will obey, or trying to rank his teachings in a scale of “priorities”, is not to be a disciple of his. And, then, by what right do we call others to discipleship? Jesus expects that the Church that is proclaiming the Gospel among the nations is also living out that Gospel before the nations. Namely, she is committed to peace-making, hungering and thirsting after justice, loving her enemies, healing the sick, sharing wealth with the dispossessed, striving for unity in the midst of differences, and so on.

His responses to one or two of the comments to his post are also interesting.

You can hear the frustration in the closing paragraph,

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I stated in my Blog observations of the Edinburgh 2010 conference (“A Centenary Celebration”, 11 June 2010) that clericalism has blighted the witness of the church. I repeat that conviction with regard to Lausanne. All the plenary speakers at the Congress were either pastors or “fulltime” workers in para-church organizations. They are not representative of the vast majority of Christians around the world who serve God as artists, engineers, lawyers, farmers, mechanics, biologists and a host of other “secular” occupations. They are the real “missionaries” of the Church, engaging with non-Christians on a daily basis, and whose work raises ethical issues that are at the cutting-edge of mission. As long as their voice is marginalized at such conferences, we shall continue to have such meaningless debates about “priorities”.

Would that “Reformed” pastors like the one who spoke at Lausanne give us the lead in recovering the Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers!

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Eschatology was critical to Stringfellow’s thinking, and particularly the imperative of living today in the light of the resurrection. I’m challenged by his thinking here on the link between eschatology and ethics.

I’m familiar with the approach to faith that presents it as legalism – here are the laws, now just get on and do them. These laws, whilst perhaps saying something true about people and the world, are stripped of their power for change when they are extracted from an eschatological framework of understanding. But we are called to live here and now in the light of the glorious resurrection of Jesus which pushes in all around us impacting on all aspects of our lives, not just that of our faith lives.

Or maybe even that last sentence requires a change. All of our life is our faith life.

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The Gospel version of the event of Jesus Christ verifies the significance of the incongruous tension between the Word of God and the common existence of the world (read 2 Cor 11, 12). The assurance of faith, in biblical terms, is that we live in that awesome incongruity until it is reconciled as the Kingdom of God. In other words, eschatology impinges incessantly upon ethics. A biblical person is one who lives within the dialectic of eschatology and ethics, realising that God’s judgment has as much to do with the humor of the Word as it does with wrath.
Simplicity of Faith, 1982

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¹³ The LORD takes his place in court;
he rises to judge the people.
¹⁴ The LORD enters into judgment
against the elders and leaders of his people:
“It is you who have ruined my vineyard;
the plunder from the poor is in your houses.
¹⁵ What do you mean by crushing my people
and grinding the faces of the poor?”
declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty.

This is too hard to hear on so many levels. Here blame is levelled against those who have ruined the country. And that judgment is based on their treatment of the poor and defenceless.

I find myself wondering how much plunder from the poor is in my house. How much has the national wealth of recent years enabled me to fill my house, my wardrobe, any of my spaces with plunder of the poor. Items bought cheaply at the expense of slave labour, below minimum wage workers, sweat shops. Food consumed cheaply because of subsidies which exclude poorer nations from the trade table. Have I decorated my house with unsustainable materials, plundering the poor earth? This is my culpability.

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¹⁶ The LORD says,
“The women of Zion are haughty,
walking along with outstretched necks,
flirting with their eyes,
strutting along with swaying hips,
with ornaments jingling on their ankles.
¹⁷ Therefore the Lord will bring sores on the heads of the women of Zion;
the LORD will make their scalps bald.”
¹⁸ In that day the Lord will snatch away their finery: the bangles and headbands and crescent necklaces, ¹⁹ the earrings and bracelets and veils, ²⁰ the headdresses and anklets and sashes, the perfume bottles and charms, ²¹ the signet rings and nose rings, ²² the fine robes and the capes and cloaks, the purses ²³ and mirrors, and the linen garments and tiaras and shawls.
²⁴ Instead of fragrance there will be a stench;
instead of a sash, a rope;
instead of well-dressed hair, baldness;
instead of fine clothing, sackcloth;
instead of beauty, branding.

Just as the men were judged because they chose leaders based upon their ability to acquire stuff, so too are the women judged because of their consumerism. Here is an astonishing list, monotonous yet devastating. It’s as if the prophet has entered all the exclusive shops in Jerusalem, or Grafton Street, and rooted in the wardrobes the rich in D4.

Not one of these items is shocking in an of itself. No single possession speaks of oppression. But the sheer quantity and the context in which they are acquired is what makes them an abomination.

His great skill is to see the truth behind the image. He sees the fine sash like a rope of slavery. He sees coiffed hair like the diseased scalp of the undernourished. He sees expensive fragrances like the repulsive stench of the unclean,

The last in this list is interesting. There is actually no Hebrew word. It’s as if Isaiah reaches his end and says,

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‘Instead of beauty…..’

All the rampant consumerism of Jerusalem was odious to Isaiah and he saw it for what it was – a form of slavery that would destroy them eventually. And all of this display and acquisition happens at the same time as the faces of the poor are ground in the dirt (v15).

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²⁵ Your men will fall by the sword,
your warriors in battle.
²⁶ The gates of Zion will lament and mourn;
destitute, she will sit on the ground.

Finally, as the men and then the women of Jerusalem are destroyed, so too is the city itself. It’s as if it sits derelict, destitute and deserted.

What Brueggemann calls this ‘fraudulent, self-indulgent society’ has met an appropriate end. All that they gloried in has been taken away by Yahweh, every aspect of social infrastructure has been rocked to the core. Incompetent leadership replaced by immature leadership, each a source of shame. A world that is unlivable where old structures of respect and deference that gave stability have been replaced by rapacious exploitation.

And all this happens not because they embrace any obviously idolatrous behaviours – presumably temple worship continues unabated. Rather the country practices a destructive duality where they take to themselves autonomy in decisions of economic, military and social importance. They act in these areas as if faith has no influence there.

Jerusalem failed to heed the warnings of Isaiah.

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‘

⁸ Jerusalem staggers,
Judah is falling;
their words and deeds are against the LORD,
defying his glorious presence.
⁹ The look on their faces testifies against them;
they parade their sin like Sodom;
they do not hide it.
Woe to them!
They have brought disaster upon themselves.

There is no-one to blame but ourselves. Our own choices have caused us to stagger and fall. And we can no longer hide it. And now we defy Yahweh by our actions, making the poor pay for the greedy actions of the unimaginably wealthy.

‘

¹⁰ Tell the righteous it will be well with them,
for they will enjoy the fruit of their deeds.

How difficult it is to hold on to this promise in the midst of calamity, while the whole nation receives the fruit of their deeds. Can we really say that righteous deeds will bring their own fruit? They have to, for there is nothing else bearing fruit to enjoy.

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¹¹ Woe to the wicked!
Disaster is upon them!
They will be paid back
for what their hands have done.

Is this true in Ireland today? Is it? Are not the wicked getting away with what their hands have done? Have many senior bankers are in prison? How many have even lost their jobs? What about our politicians? Is the lack of justice and fairness in our solutions not a hint that our solutions should be questioned?

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¹² Youths oppress my people,
women rule over them.

Recognising that Isaiah was writing to a strongly patriarchal society, this fact was a cause of deep shame. The men squabbled, no-one would take responsibility (v6), so they were led by women and children. Leaving aside contemporary sensibilities on gender roles, we know what it is to have leaders who are a source of national shame.

With no heroes or warriors worth their salt (v2), and no captains of fifty or men of rank (v3) mere callow youths could oppress a nation. Today it’s nameless and faceless investors and bond holders, and we have no heroes.

‘

My people, your guides lead you astray;
they turn you from the path.

No surprise there for anyone in Ireland!

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Having been installed as economic advisor to the Pharoah, Joseph takes steps to insure Egypt against the coming austerity. But rather than simply establishing the ancient equivalent of a National Pension Reserve Fund, Joseph presses home the advantage the State has against an increasingly impoverished nation.

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¹³ There was no food, however, in the whole region because the famine was severe; both Egypt and Canaan wasted away because of the famine. ¹⁴ Joseph collected all the money that was to be found in Egypt and Canaan in payment for the grain they were buying, and he brought it to Pharaoh’s palace. ¹⁵ When the money of the people of Egypt and Canaan was gone, all Egypt came to Joseph and said, “Give us food. Why should we die before your eyes? Our money is all gone.”

¹⁶ “Then bring your livestock,” said Joseph. “I will sell you food in exchange for your livestock, since your money is gone.” ¹⁷ So they brought their livestock to Joseph, and he gave them food in exchange for their horses, their sheep and goats, their cattle and donkeys. And he brought them through that year with food in exchange for all their livestock.

¹⁸ When that year was over, they came to him the following year and said, “We cannot hide from our lord the fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our lord except our bodies and our land. ¹⁹ Why should we perish before your eyes—we and our land as well? Buy us and our land in exchange for food, and we with our land will be in bondage to Pharaoh. Give us seed so that we may live and not die, and that the land may not become desolate.”

²⁰ So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh’s, ²¹ and Joseph reduced the people to servitude,^[c] from one end of Egypt to the other. ²² However, he did not buy the land of the priests, because they received a regular allotment from Pharaoh and had food enough from the allotment Pharaoh gave them. That is why they did not sell their land.

²³ Joseph said to the people, “Now that I have bought you and your land today for Pharaoh, here is seed for you so you can plant the ground. ²⁴ But when the crop comes in, give a fifth of it to Pharaoh. The other four-fifths you may keep as seed for the fields and as food for yourselves and your households and your children.”

²⁵ “You have saved our lives,” they said. “May we find favor in the eyes of our lord; we will be in bondage to Pharaoh.”
Genesis 47:13-25

Firstly, he charges money for the grain he gives to those starving in the famine. Reducing money supply in the country by storing it in the Pharaoh’s coffers. As belts continue to tighten, he then charges people their livestock, by which he also ensures their continued poverty and their dependence on the State.

Finally, by the third year the people say the following,

‘

We cannot hide from our lord the fact that since our money is gone and our livestock belongs to you, there is nothing left for our lord except our bodies and our land. (Gen 47:18)

And Joseph takes their bodies and effectively enslaves the people in order to protect the integrity of the country’s economic system.

By doing so he lays the foundations for the enslavement of the Israelites.

I invite you to read this passage from the Old Testament and tell me, was what Joseph did a just and honourable thing? I invite you further into reading this passage with Ireland’s Advent troubles in your mind, and answer me, where is the justice in the IMF/EU/ECB deal?

For those accustomed to reading the bible in a certain way, you may need to lay aside an automatic impulse to defend Joseph, but I ask you, with our contemporary situation in mind, can this form of behaviour ever be justified?

Which leads me to ask, have the government of Ireland not effectively enslaved generations to protect the State’s reputation and the investments of the bond holders? And can anyone say what injustices this act is storing up for us in the future?

And what should we make of the people’s delight at their enslavement? Should we be skeptical? Could this be an official gloss? Would the reaction of Ireland’s citizens to the bailout give us a more accurate impression of what happened?

Or is this designed to enrage us that a people should be brought so low as to see slavery as preferable to poverty. However we read it, I think the actions of the national authorities are utterly shameful and without excuse.

Reading this passage of the bible makes me wish I had a pulpit.

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‘

⁶ A man will seize one of his brothers
in his father’s house, and say,
“You have a cloak, you be our leader;
take charge of this heap of ruins!”

This is an interesting feature of the end. What is going on here? A man seizes his brother in his father’s house which is already a place of ruins.

Is this a son usurping the generational respect supposed to be afforded to his father?

A man is ‘seized’ for leadership, is this desperation for anyone to lead?

The only qualification for leadership is the possession of a cloak. Is this because it was a society who measured a person by what they possessed? Again this prefigures what will come later in the chapter.

The family home may be in ruins, but a pretence of wealth and responsibility can still be maintained because he has a coat.

How does the father feel, sitting in his heap of ruins, watching his sons wrestle over who can throw off responsibility? Is he immobilised by shame? By guilt that he and his generation has brought the nation to this state? Or the pain of watching his hapless children fail to cope with their roles?

Is this family scene being repeated at all levels of the nation?

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⁷ But in that day he will cry out,
“I have no remedy.
I have no food or clothing in my house;
do not make me the leader of the people.”

There is no remedy. The man seized for leadership claims that despite the fact that he possesses a fine cloak he can’t feed his family. The cloak simply covers a deceit, a pretence that all is well. If he cannot, despite appearances, provide for his own family, don’t make him a leader of the nation.

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