Theology for the Masses

“[Your dream to become great] is the dream of every living creature, the desire that is the very root of life itself. To grow until every space is a part of you. It’s the desire for greatness. There are two ways of fulfilling this, however. One way is to kill anything that is not yourself, to swallow it up until and destroy it until there is nothing left to oppose you. But that way is evil. You say to all the universe, “Only I will be great, and to make room for me, all the rest of you must give up even what you already have to make room for me.” – Ender Wiggin, Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

“⁷Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹ God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. … ¹⁹ We love because he first loved us.” – John the Elder (1 John 4)

What does it mean to say that God is Love? For much of our history, Christian theology has spoken of God’s central attribute as existence or glory or something of the like. But John is claiming something all-together different. John tells us that “God is love”, and another writing from that same community defines Love as Sacrifice: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). But what then does it mean to say that God is Sacrifice? To sacrifice is to give up that which we value. Giving up that which is not dear to us is hardly sacrifice; rather, to sacrifice is in a very real way to give of ourselves, to give that which comprises our identity. So imagine a God who is defined not by self-glorification or –gratification, but by self-emptying, self-sacrifice. Imagine a God existing in three persons who are engaged in an eternal dance of joyful, selfless giving. This sort of God finds glory not in self-aggrandizement, but rather in selfless giving. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the glory. It is this sort of God who, out of the overflow of joy and sacrifice, the overflow of Love, creates a world filled with being who, like himself, have a will that they can willfully sacrifice (for one cannot be selfless if one has no Self to give).

But here, of course, is the steep cost of Love. Beings created in the Imago Dei, the Image of God, can choose to sacrifice, or they can choose not to sacrifice. We can choose to give of ourselves or we can choose to preserve our Selves, to fight and to battle until we have created a space in which only We exist. This is the essence of Sin: that we would choose to preserve I at the expense of the Other, rather than to give I in service, in sacrifice to the Other. This tendency to think first of ourselves, to work for self-preservation, has been at work in us since the beginning, and we are nothing if not creatures of habit.

This Self, this Sin has infected us all since the beginning. We Self-full beings see the beauty of creation through the lens of Self; we tend to ask only “how can this serve my needs?” Rather than work with God to cultivate his Garden, we have chosen instead to do as we please, and in doing so, we serve to unmake that which God called good (Genesis 6). In choosing not to serve God even as God gives himself to us, we have become captives in our own minds, unable to see or care for anything beyond that which is good for I. We have lost what it means to abandon our Selves, to live for something other than I, and so have been cut off from God, unable to enter into his Garden of giving, of true Life anymore.

Thanks be to God that he did not leave us in this sorry state! Rather, he gave once more of himself, emptying himself of his divine nature and taking the form of a slave. He came to We who could tolerate no Other and he refused to be one with us. Rather, he offered us a different way to live, a way that did not demand the preservation of the Self, but rather offers the Self in acts of Love, of Sacrifice. We could not tolerate his Otherness, his difference, and yet still he gave himself to Us, and let us have our way with him. We did what any Self does when it feels threatened. We lashed out and destroyed that which threatens. He knew this, and yet he still gave. He gave and gave, until it killed him.

And only then was the power of Love revealed. For we were made to see that in the end, all of our attempts to preserve I will only end in destruction, for we were not created to take. We were created to give, in imitation of the Self who gave himSelf for us.

“A careless leper too comfortable in his own world to notice the older wounds have new infections with new intentions.
Darkness settled in behind me, tapped me on the shoulder singing shivers to my spine from the corners of my mind,
“I’ve been wanting to remind you of everything you’ve left behind and wouldn’t you, shouldn’t you remember me?
Should you forget, I haven’t yet.”

She’s there when I’m alone and she always seems to know the stories that’ll take me back to where my comforts sleep.
A caress with velvet paws that hide her sharpened claws along the walls that time has built high searching for the blemishes.
And i know she’s breathing murder, that it is folly to endure her. But there is sweetness in her whisper,
“When you’ve had enough, I’ll be waiting. Wouldn’t you, shouldn’t you remember me?
Should you forget, I haven’t yet.’”– Stavesacre, “The Two Heavens”

Colossians 2:15 “Jesus disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them.”

In the ancient world, victorious armies made ‘public spectacles’ of their defeated opponents. These spectacles involved parading the defeated soldiers and generals through the main center of the town, naked and shackled, humiliated and utterly defeated, trailing behind the glorious, victorious, conquering army dressed all in white and reds, mounted or marching proudly. The cultural effects of this sort of parade cannot be missed: the victors are strong, unconquerable, glorious. The enemy is weak, defenseless and beaten. The Other is unable to stand before the We.

As I read Paul’s words in Colossians, I thought of Jesus’ parade through the streets of Jerusalem. I thought of how he was tried as a traitor to Rome and condemned as a rabble-rouser, an insurrectionist, for daring to claim kingship of a kingdom other than Rome. For this crime, Rome reserved its most heinous, brutal, and humiliating punishment: execution by crucifixion. Jesus was tortured, then stripped naked and strapped to a crossbeam. Led by brightly dressed, exquisitely disciplined Roman soldiers, he was paraded through the town and out of the city, then hung naked from a cross for all to see until he died. Rome’s message was clear: see, Judea, your king, your messiah. We have made a public spectacle of your savior, your christ. Such a pitiable thing cannot stand before the glory of Rome. Rome is mighty. Rome is powerful. And because of this, Rome is glorious. Rome is able and willing to strike down all who dare to dream of another kingdom, for Rome is eternal. See the consequences of your folly. See and worship Rome. This is Rome’s parade. This is Rome’s spectacle.

But Easter Sunday revealed Rome’s spectacle to be Jesus’ spectacle, God’s spectacle. Rome did not take Jesus; Jesus gave himself. Rome did not torture Jesus; Jesus submitted to Rome. Rome did not lead Jesus down the city streets to display his weakness; Jesus gave himself to the soldiers to expose the ultimate failings of Roman justice – the innocent are punished, the oppressed are destroyed, and evil assaults good. In Jesus’ parade, Rome is seen to be a sad caricature of God. Where Rome flaunts its power and might, God offers arms spread in love. Where Rome crushes those who are it enemies, God submits to them and dies for them so that God may redeem them. In submitting to the violence and death-consumed politics of the “rulers and authorities”, Jesus subverts them and turns their spectacle back upon themselves, revealing them for the ineffectual parodies they are.

And, of course, he ultimately triumphs over them. By inverting their spectacle, Jesus (re)creates a new possibility for humanity. No longer must we abide by the laws of “philosophies and empty deceits according to human tradition and the elemental spirits of the world” as Paul says earlier (2:8). Rather, we are free to live in a community conformed not to the world, but transformed into the image of Jesus himself. We call this community the Church, and as his body, Jesus has invited us into his Parade. As Rodney Clapp has elaborated, our communal worship is to be the time when we as the Body of Christ join together and participate in Jesus’ Parade of the Cross. We are to come together and affirm (through the songs we sing, through the sacraments we observe, through the teachings we hear and discuss, through the prayers we pray, etc.) the Way of Jesus rather than the way of the world. We are to remind ourselves (and the world in which we live) on at least a weekly basis of the radical way Jesus triumphed over the rulers and authorities of this world. We are to join with Jesus in becoming a public spectacle that will expose the violence and evil of the world for what it is.

How often do our worship services do this? That is, how often do we engage in Parades that challenge the ways of the world? And how often do we allow our Parades to become nothing more than reinforcements of the violence, opulence and oppression that so characterizes our “Christian Nation”? I think of our Independence Day services, of our Battle Hymns of the Republic and crying out, “Onward, Christian Solder, marching as to War, with the Cross of Jesus going on before”. I think of these and wonder what we plan to do with that cross that goes before us. Do we plan to die on it? Or are we, as Rome, going to crucify the Other so that We can feel strong?

May we remember that ultimate Other, who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave… and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” He “was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” This is what true Glory looks like. And that’s something Rome cannot understand.

What new mystery is this? What blessed backwardness? The Immeasurable One is held and does not resist. Struck by wicked words and foolish fits of senseless men, the Almighty One does not defend. — mewithoutYou