A New Song & New Direction

 A reflection I read this morning based on Psalm 98 ended by saying,

"What new song is God inviting you to sing?"

Indeed, it is time long past overdue for Christianity to sing a new song.  When those who have claimed the most loudly and fiercely that they are the 'true believers," yet they lift Donald Trump up as their messiah king - a man who no more lives out the acts and prayers of Jesus than a fly can lift a car -- there is trouble in the Christian theological realm. 

The Christian theological realm has had a heavy "Orthodox" overture for nearly a thousand years that arose in a vastly different time, culture, and worldview.  So much has changed.  Yet, Christianity has limped along carrying perspectives of life from the Dark Ages; perspectives that survive only in the smallest and darkest of earth's places - wee human hearts with stuck imaginations and dysfunctional neuropathways.

There is a scene in The Mission*, where the former soldier newly converted to Christianity is assigned the penance of carrying his heavy armor up the cliffs of a high waterfall. Nearing the top he cuts the cord and the armor clatters down the rocky face.  This is an image in my head of how we must cut the cord that holds back the church with the worn, tired theologies of some epistle writers, St. Augustine, Anselm, and other "church fathers" (Euro-Caucasian fathers.) I don't expect a single one of them expected for their refrains to still be reverberating the way they do in 2021!

New more profound understandings of the unique unfolding of life on this planet, the global interconnections, the fragility of health in the midst of toxicity generated through human avarice and indifference, vulnerabilities to pathogens after a long period of supposedly conquering them, the struggle to hold on to democratic principles that all people are created equal are demanding a new song, a new word of inspiration.  The old formulations of sacrificial or substitutionary atonement are nonsensical in the 21st century.  The ancient lineages of authoritarian abuses taint and a "top-down hierarchical structure" to the Christian faith leave most post-modern people cold. 

The following Christian-held doctrines have (honestly) never held much sense under the spotlight of Divine love or the teachings of Jesus:

1. The idea that a "loving" God has to nail someone on a cross to "pay" for one's "bad" behavior.
2. That God authorizes human authority to burn, drown, draw & quarter, nail to crosses, disembowel, chop, behead, ostracize, exile, banish... anyone because their beliefs didn't match up with the letter of that group of human's enacted law.
3.  Heaven has a specific location "up there" with St. Peter guarding the gate and streets of gold.
4. Hell has a specific location "down there," and it is run by a red man in horns with a pitchfork (i.e. Satan, the devil, Beelzebub.)
5.  Humans have "dominion" over the earth, so, for the dominate "good Christian authority" it is okay to burn, cut down, bulldoze, concrete, asphalt, pollute, hunt to extinction, or commit genocide against all creatures great, small, prescient or not.
6. The mentally ill and others (including LGBTQ, midwives & herbalists, witches, non-white...) are demon possessed and must submit to painful exorcism and "re-indoctrination," or in our modern times be marginalized from every Christian assembly.
7. The assumption that nobody experiences the presence of God on their own without the proper indoctrination of how to think, live, talk, and be in "the right" church.

These are just a start on naming why a new song is needed.  The Christian faith did not start out as an individualistic saving grace with most of its power waiting in "eternity" for the beloved to die in order to receive it.  It didn't start out as a weapon of fear used to scare people into faith and thereby submission to the ruling authority or class.

It was initially a communal fellowship of believers who frequently ate together and shared all they had.  Looking to Jesus for the model for life, he ate with tax collectors and sinners, fed people, and pretty diligently worked to remove boundaries that isolated or separated "the least of these." While he was clear his intent wasn't to wipe away the model of  "The Law" (of Moses), his acts focused, for all who would follow him, on "loving God and one another as yourself."  For this "radical" re-ordering of the religious habits he was judged to be a revolutionary disrupter and turned over to Rome under false testimonies to be killed.

We need to get more engaged in confessing the hurt this false co-optation has caused and work more diligently to bring forth a clear articulation that warring with the devil is not the purpose of Christ.  Bringing forth communities of love, caring and sharing all that we have is the goal.  I will be attempting to sound some chords for new songs in all future blogs. 

 

,

Transfiguration Prayer

Light of all light make me.

Dark of all dark not undo me.

Tabor Light, lighten my way.

Bring me comfort, referee my struggles,

Push back the shadows and lengthening of all sorrows.

Thy will be done by me.

With thine outstretched hand

Lift and lighten the weight of all sources of gloom.

Transfigure my sour interpretations, raise my descendant thoughts

Gather round me with thy joined liminal spirits -- Moses, Elijah,

Mary Magdalene, Peter, Jude, Theresa of Avila, and Hildegard. 

Greatest glory of Christendom

Light of all light make me

Be my hope as I am thine in your belonging.

Amen. 

A Baptismal Divider

 "...when Jesus had been baptized, and was still praying, the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form like a dove on him, and from the heavens came a voice, "You are my dearly beloved child; you bring me great joy." -- Luke 3:21-22(*)

Christian baptism has three or more conceptual meanings in different denominations.  It is a considered a sacrament which is, simply defined, an outward visible sign of an inward invisible grace.  It is practiced differently with different conceptual understandings.  One understanding is the baptism of repentance, like John the Baptist practiced and what gets labeled in our modern day as "adult baptism."  The outward sign is the water (be it applied via "dunking" or "sprinkling.")  The inner grace is the "cleansing from sin."  The second form still involves the water but the understanding of it is that the act denotes an embracing by and inclusion of the individual in the beloved community (family) of God.  The third form is connected with the idea of christening.  It is the baptismal act done with a small child, often an infant, and is mostly the idea of naming the child.  A fourth form of baptism is "the baptism of the Holy Spirit."  It might not involve the use of water and it is often said that it is a "second" or added connection that occurs within the spirit of the person.

Whichever form we look at, baptism draws a line in a person's life.  There is before baptism and after baptism.  Jesus is baptized and in the Gospel of Mark he immediately embarks upon his working ministry.  An uneventful life becomes an eventful life.  What difference did baptism make in your life?  What events in your life are different because of your baptism?

I propose that we reexamine our lives in the context of what baptism initiates. I argue that it is not just a sprinkling into belonging to a church.  It is a divider in your life - a before and after moment of consequence.  Spirit life before baptism is a concept and after it should be an engaged purposeful dance with Jesus. 

We are witnessing the arrival at a fork in the road of American life & society.  The road for the past 4 years has shown signs that we were approaching a desert.  Unless we exit it, we are in for a long period of wandering in a wilderness where many will die and suffer, even more so than already have.  Hate speech, vitriol, untruth, and violent talk has spread like a malignant cancer across social media and every institution has been pulled into the maelstrom, even the Church.  Baptism is the water that must be tapped into to renew the human drought of spirit.  

The Apostle Paul lists the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23

Love, joy, peace, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, trustfulness, gentleness, self-control.(*)

These are the properties seen in human relationship when baptism has been initiated within us.  They are sorely lacking in all political speech and difficult to come across on social media, proving neither venue is of God.  They don't exist in the Nationalist Christian Church, which has co-opted the "evangelical" wing of the Church, much as Trumpism has taken over the Republican party. But they are properties that the mainstream Church in America needs to re-commit itself to spreading, while simultaneously calling out all forms of lies, hate speech, or violence.

The divider is laid down as a redline in the desert sand.  Water and fruit of the Spirit is like the manna God gave the Hebrews in their 40-year sojourn in the wilderness and it must be again what each of us and our churches preach, teach, and demand.

(*) - Hal Taussig, A New New Testament: A Bible for the 21st Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts, c. 2015, Mariner Books, Hougton-Mifflin Harcourt Pub., Boston & New York