The Spirit of Tradition: The Role of Scripture in Our Lives

A rich man eats a feast while a poor man starves.

It’s a familiar story.

It was a familiar story when Jesus told it two millennia ago, and it’s still a familiar story now.

It’s what comes after that story that makes Jesus’s telling of it remarkable. Jesus uses that everyday story as a background to launch into the story about the conversation he imagines the rich man having with Abraham, the father of the Jewish faith, the one through whom “all the nations on the earth will be blessed.”

And Jesus imagines them having a conversation about the role of scripture in our lives.

The rich man cries out, “Father Abraham, send Lazarus with some water, I’m in agony.”

And Abraham reasons with him, “Remember that in your lifetime you received many good things,” and then goes on to point out, “there’s this chasm between us,” like, I can’t really do anything for you here.

The rich man seems to accept that — he doesn’t argue.

But he does make another request (well, more like a demand) of Abraham, on behalf of his family. “Send Lazarus to my house so that he might warn them.”

And Abraham replies, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.”

“Moses and the prophets” is a longhand way of saying scripture, but it’s also more evocative than that.

According to rabbinic tradition, Moses wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. To say “They have Moses” conjures the histories and laws contained in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

To say “They have Moses” would evoke the entirety of the laws, which covers many aspects of life — what you do and don’t do on a Sunday, the clothes you wear, how you grow your food, which food you eat, and who you eat with.

More deeply, more centrally than the law, to say “They have Moses” evokes the central narrative of Jewish identity found in the Exodus story.

The Exodus story is about Abraham’s descendents, a few generations on. They are enslaved, exploited, oppressed by the world superpower of the day. They had nothing. And God calls Moses to lead them to freedom, to search for a home, to restore them to their original purpose as God’s people — to bless all the nations of the earth.

To say “Moses” encompasses both story and law, together, because of course they’re intimately connected. It’s been suggested that many of the laws found in Torah would have been for better health of a nomadic people at that time. The law came from and was designed to fit their circumstances. And when those laws first came, they were new ways of living.

Abraham says to the rich man, “They have Moses and the prophets.”

The books of the prophets make up much of the rest of Hebrew scripture.

Each prophet has different emphases, various points they want to highlight, but they all share the task of calling God’s people back to their identity as God’s people. They all call God’s people back to being a blessing to all nations of the earth.

The prophets called people to live into that identity in ways that matched their new context, even when that context was horrific, even when it felt unbearable.

Some prophets spoke when the Jewish people were oppressed or exiled, offering hope or reminding them to continue to be a blessing to others — even their oppressors.

Some prophets, like Amos (whose words the lectionary places alongside the story of the rich man and Lazarus), wrote at a time of relative peace and prosperity, but noted the neglect of God’s laws. Amos says, “Alas for those who lounge on their couches, and eat lambs and calves.” It seems that luxurious opulence and neglect go hand in hand.

Psalm 146 (again, chosen to go along with these texts from the lectionary), succinctly encompasses many of the themes from Moses and the prophets.

The psalm begins and ends with “Praise the Lord.”

The middle verses expand on what it looks like to praise the lord: “Do not put your trust in the political powers, in mortals, in whom there is no help; happy are those whose hope is in the Lord their God.”

It goes on to describe the character of this God by listing the people that God shows concern for: the oppressed, the hungry, prisoners, the blind, those who are bowed down, the righteous, the strangers, the orphans, and the widow.

This is not Time Magazine’s list of the most influential people.

These are not the kind of people you want to aligning yourself with if you want wealth or political influence or military power.

Yet they’re the ones that God has chosen to be God’s people, to go and bless all the nations of the earth. People who are on the bottom of the power chain. People with massive amounts of debt. People who had broken laws or rebelled against the empire. People burdened by disability and disease. People without even the most fundamental markers of social status of family or nation: immigrants, refugees, foster kids.

Abraham tells the rich man, “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.”

And the rich man — who quietly accepted his fate of flames without a drop of water — the rich man says, “No, father Abraham.”

The rich man says that this wealth of scripture isn’t enough.

And you know, he kind of has a point.

Perhaps the rich man followed the law, did everything by the book. He wore the right clothes, he ate the right things, he didn’t work on the sabbath, he gave 10% of his income to his religious institution — perhaps he did everything “right.” He followed the law to the letter.

And then he ends up in the flames of Hades.

The laws of “Moses and the prophets” weren’t enough.

Perhaps what he was missing isn’t obedience to law. Perhaps his error wasn’t a failure to follow the law.

Perhaps what he was missing is the spirit of those laws.

His error was in misunderstanding the purpose of the law.

The law is not a checklist to get to heaven; it’s an aid to help guide us into loving God and neighbor.

Abraham, notably, didn’t have Moses and the prophets; he didn’t have law to follow at all.

All he had was a God who called him to unbelievable tasks. He followed God’s call in ways that were new for his time. For instance, God told Abraham to circumcise himself and all the men in his household. This was a new idea that Abraham followed — and it became a central marker of Jewish tradition.

And Abraham mentions his descendent Moses, who also had no law.

He, too, did his best to follow the demands of a foolish God — a God who sent him into the center of world power with nothing but a long stick. Moses didn’t have a law to follow. He wrote the law, wrote the best practices for living as they travelled through the desert. And those laws became central markers of Jewish tradition.

And the prophets took those laws and applied them to new contexts, in new ways. The prophets followed the spirit, and utilized the law as a way to help a people follow the spirit.

Because, as C Wess Daniels writes, the point of a faith community, “the point of the church is not to be faithful to tradition at all costs. The point of the church is to be faithful to the eternal spirit within the tradition, which is also at work in the world.”

In his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus confronts the idea that following the law is enough.

Jesus invites us to live into the spirit of the law.

He heals on the sabbath. He eats with the most despised people in town. He tells stories and performs miracles in ways that reframe the law as not just a set of rules to follow, but as a way of living that recognizes and loves the ones that the empire has forgotten, ignored, or oppressed.

And in doing so, he again changed the tradition.

Each Sunday, we share bread and cup at Jesus’s table. We do this not because Jesus commands it, not as a checklist on the way to Abraham’s side in heaven. We come to the table to be fed. We come to remember that Jesus feeds everyone. We come to remember that spirit is with us and spirit is for us.

May our traditions guide us in our understanding and experience of the eternal, and push us out into the world — where spirit can meet us, and transform us, yet again.

Originally preached at St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, WA, on Sept 25, 2016.

In the comments…

What rhythms or rituals do you observe out of habit that no longer have meaningful significance?

Where do you hear invitations to participate with the spirit in the world?

August 23, 2016August 22, 2016

Flash Mob Kingdom: Reflections on the Division Jesus Promises

“I came not to bring peace to the earth, but rather division,” Jesus tells his disciples. “Mother against daughter and father against son.”

I struggle with his words. I struggle with the fact that Jesus said these words.

These words have been used to isolate and distance.

The thinking seems to be that Christians are supposed to be divisive. We’re supposed to be countercultural, even — if necessary — counter-familial.

Sometimes a person makes a decision or is a way that his or her family doesn’t like. Perhaps he’s in a relationship with someone of a different race, or she’s in a relationship with someone of the same sex. Perhaps he’s abandoning the family business to pursue his dreams. Perhaps she’s casting her vote for the other party.

“A household will be divided,” hisses one party, ending the conversation — and, at times, the relationship.

My struggle, I guess, isn’t with Jesus’s words so much as it is with the way the rest of us interpret and apply those words.

Because I don’t think that Jesus meant his words to tell us what we’re supposed to do in response to the signs of the times.

Indeed, the passage is actually about what Jesus does in the world, not what we are to do. “I came to bring fire; I came to bring division.”

It is Jesus, by his very presence, who is divisive.

Angels announced his birth with the song “peace to God’s people on Earth” and the promise that he would guide our feet in the way in peace.

The peace he brought in his birth disrupted what the Romans called Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. The Peace of Rome was about assimilation to the Roman Empire and obedience to Caesar. The Peace of Rome was a peace that meant, simply, the absence of war, the absence of resistance to the empire.

Jesus disrupted the Peace of Rome, bringing the Peace of God, which is much more than an absence of war. The peace Christ brings is the active presence of God with Us.

And division followed.

Division, then, is not the primary goal of Jesus’s behavior. His words here are perhaps best read as an honest description of what will naturally occur as he continues his work of bringing about the Kingdom of God.

Peace and division are both the work of Jesus, not a command to his followers. We don’t need to have divided homes in order to love God. We are not called to judge our families or vehemently defend our beliefs and views.

Jesus is the one who brings the fire, not us.

That said, Jesus’s work of peace and division will certainly have implications for his followers.

Just as living under the Roman Empire came with a certain way of doing things — roads built and traveled a certain way, a rhythm of life and taxes, a pattern of social etiquette and customs — we, too, have a certain way of producing and acquiring items, a certain rhythm of life and taxes, a set pattern of traditions and customs. Some of these are huge systems: our voting schedule, the way we invest money, the way we celebrate Christmas. Others are small: that we have eggs for breakfast, that we walk on the right.

But Jesus tells us that just because our world has a certain order to it, does not mean that the order is God’s.

And as we follow Jesus in his bringing of the Kingdom, the order of our world may be disrupted.

Which part of us loves.

I think our desire to see our world disrupted is why we love the flash mob phenomenon of the last decade so much.

The world has a certain way of doing things, a certain rhythm, a certain pattern. And flash mobs — they know that we have certain expectations for what happens in public places. There are ways the world works. Flash mobs play with our expectations.

My favorite are the flash mobs at malls right before Christmas, bursting into Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. I love the disruption of normalcy, the call to beauty and joy and the holy right in the midst of an everyday place, the call to HALLELUJAH in the midst of our errands.

During the Chorus, there are always a few grumpy people.

And I love them, because they’re just like me. They’ve got their list, they’ve got errands, they’re not about to stop their very productive shopping trip. In the videos, you see them in the background, nudging the makeup artist to continue her work or hurriedly checking out so they can go on about their day.

They are so caught up in what they have to do — so caught up in the workings of the world — that they cannot stop to notice the holy. They cannot hear the call to a holy moment even as they shout over the HALLELUJAHs ringing in their ears.

And it’s disruptive, it’s disrupting what they’re doing, disrupting their entire day. The mall is for certain activities, for commerce, and everyone was doing that, and now there are two things going on: the normal commerce of the world and the outbursting chorus of Hallelujah.

I especially love the Hallelujah Chorus flash mobs most because people join in.

It’s such a well-known piece. You can see, in the videos, people caught off guard, then finding the rhythm, remembering the words and their part, and, with increasing confidence, joining in. They sometimes stumble, they sometimes miss a queue our fall out of step with the timing — but they’re in it.

In a span of seconds, they hear the call to live in a way that is different from the way of the world, stop to pay attention, and then become active participants in this new reality.

And I think that’s exactly what the choristers hope for: that everyone join them, that everyone recognize this is a good and worthwhile activity — at least for the next five minutes.

The choir isn’t there setting out to be divisive. But not everyone is able to hear their action as an invitation. Some stick to the status quo, stick to the way things are — and so there’s division.

Division is not the goal, but occurs as a natural outcome of pursuing the holy.

I think that’s what Jesus is on about.

We’re invited to follow him into a Kingdom way of life, a way that loves of God and neighbor — and that living be divisive as a natural outcome.

There will be others who are so committed to the way the world is that they can’t hear the invitation to the way the world could be.

There was a group of Christians who took seriously God’s command to care for the planet.

They approached their neighbors, in their suburban setting, asking them to begin recycling and found that their neighbors were totally uninterested.

This group didn’t have quite the glamour of a flash mob, but they had read the signs of the times — and they decided to act on it. They started going through the public trash cans on the street to remove any recyclable cans and bottles. They started going through their neighbors’ trash bins, removing what could be recycled.

The neighbors were furious. These Christians were ruining their neighborhood. They told them to stop; they wouldn’t.

It was divisive.

Eventually, the neighbors found a way to get these Christians to stop digging through their garbage: They started recycling.

At St Luke’s Episcopal Church in Ballard, where I serve, there’s group of Christians who took seriously God’s command to feed the hungry and care for the poor.

And so they did, and they do. They cook meals that they serve for free, five days a week, for any and all who care to come.

The neighbors don’t understand; some of them are quite angry. These Christians are ruining the neighborhood.

Jesus’s experience of division might bring us some consolation. The pursuit of the Peace of God is rarely without division.

Jesus invites us to read our times.

To read the movements and rhythms of our culture, our city, and our homes. He invites us to consider: What would it look like to love God and neighbor in this place? How might I pursue the Kingdom in this moment?

And, yes, he warns us that when he shows up it will bring division, disunity — not the division of warfare or indifference, but a division rooted in the singing of the holy in a song that some just won’t be able to hear.

Do you hear the holy song?

Do you hear the Hallelujahs?

Will you join in singing?

In the comments…

Where do you see glimpses of the kingdom in your own life?

Where do you see the kingdom show up in your neighborhood?

What might you do to “join in the singing”? How could you love God and neighbor?

What fears hold you back from joining?

July 4, 2016July 1, 2016

With Liberty & Justice For All

Examining the application of "liberty and justice for all" against the intent of the divine in Christian scripture - read on KateRaeDavis.com

Gun violence prevention. Marriage. Minimum wage.

Many of the major debates going on in the US today are multiple faces of one core debate. Which do we value more: liberty or justice?

We pledge allegiance to be a nation “with liberty and justice for all.” Which is a poetic and beautiful aim, but misleading in the way it joins the two values. Liberty and justice don’t hold hands so much as they arm wrestle.

Mary Midgley in The Myths We Live By writes on the way that our post-Enlightenment world is captivated (read: held captive) by the poetic simplicity of these concepts. Such simplicity, she argues, obliterates the tension of trying to value competing ideals.

“Enlightenment concepts need our attention because they tend to be particularly simple and sweeping. Dramatic simplicity has been one of their chief attractions and is also their chronic weakness, a serious one when they need to be applied in detail. For instance, the Enlightenment’s overriding emphasis on freedom often conflicts with other equally important ideals such as justice or compassion. Complete commercial freedom, for example, or complete freedom to carry weapons, can cause serious harm and injustice. We need, then, to supplement the original dazzling insight about freedom with a more discriminating priority system.”

I should note that Midgley is English, though the issues she raises in this paragraph are particular relevant to contemporary USAmerica. Unchecked capitalism and weapon-carrying are two freedoms that USAmericans seem to value more than other developed countries.

And to the same degree that we have freedom, we suffer the consequences of freedom in the form of injustices.

To reframe our debates in terms of the values of liberty and justice:

Do we value commercial freedom for corporations, or wage justice for families?

Do we value freedom for near-unlimited access to weapons, or justice for … well, all the individuals and groups who are targeted without trial; just about any group that is feared or hated (persons of gender and sexual diversity, persons of various racial and ethnic backgrounds, persons of certain religions, persons who happen to work at certain places or attend certain schools, or just happened to be in a public space)? In the gun debate, we measure the cost of rampant freedom in the death toll.

Do we value freedom for marriage or justice for marriage? This one is interesting in that whichever we prioritize, everyone gets to get married. So whatever values are informing anti-marriage sentiment, they aren’t very American. And — more on this next — they aren’t very Christian.

In scripture, liberty and freedom are a strong theme.

The words make most of their appearances in Paul’s letters, and usually as a command to proclaim liberty to those who are captive. To Paul, liberty is for the oppressed. Liberty is not for those who are already in power. Those who live freely have little need for liberation.

Paul actually makes it a point to caution on the use of liberty for those who have it or have newly obtained it. In his letter to the church in Corinth, Paul writes “take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” He’s talking about eating meat; a modern parallel might be how I shouldn’t allow my freedom to drink alcohol to become a stumbling block to those who are newly confronting their alcoholism. But the spirit of his words apply more broadly: the freedoms of some shouldn’t make life difficult for others who have weaknesses.

Justice and her sisters compassion and mercy are also strong themes throughout biblical texts.

Compassion is most often used as a description of God or Jesus. Mercy, too, almost always comes from God. Throughout both the First Testament writings and in the Gospels we hear the refrain “He had compassion on them.”

Who are the “them” that the Holy One has compassion on? The blind, the hungry, the weeping.

Again, it would seem that the powerful, the full, the content, the ones who have their lives together have little need for compassion.

My favorite use of ‘justice’ in scripture is Jesus’s words to those in positions of power and influence. He acknowledges that they do what is right strictly according to the law, but that they’ve “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith.” Jesus asserts that the spirit of “justice and mercy and faith” should undergird the law, should inform the carrying out of the law.

What would our world look like if we believed similarly?

What might this election season — or to dream even bigger — what might this country look like if “Christian Values” voters made justice and mercy their primary value?

If liberty is for the oppressed and justice and compassion are for those in need, citizens concerned with Christian values must ask, when considering public policy: Who do these laws favor?

And in wider society, Christians must unite as the voice asking: Who is held captive? What do we/they need to be freed from? What might we/they be freed to? Who has been treated unjustly, and what do we need to do in order to make manifest something closer to justice?

The only one who is fully able to hold the tension of “liberty and justice for all” is God.

Especially when we read “for all” conditionally. When people say these words, they rarely mean it. They seem to mean “liberty and justice for all 4% of the world’s population.” But the words were penned with the intent of a global all.

It is God who grants freedom, who leads the people of Israel out of Egypt. It is God in Jesus who shows what true freedom to love looks like. And it is God who will be able to deliver justice without preference or blindness, God who has compassion on us.

Liberty and justice are ultimately the prerogatives of God, and anything we do in their name will undoubtedly fall short of the ideal.

But I don’t see that as any reason for us to stop holding their marriage as our aim.

Thanks for reading! For weekly updates on all the blog’s posts (as well as access to the Free, Ever-Expanding Resource Library), sign up below:

In the comments…

Do you tend toward liberty or justice? What has formed and informed that preference?

Who do you see as captives in contemporary USAmerica? Who is treated unjustly?

May 3, 2016April 26, 2016

What Bing Bong Can Teach Us About Christ

Bing Bong Christ? What does Bing Bong teach us about the crucifixion? - Literate Theology / KateRaeDavis.com (image property of Disney/Pixar)

It started with a casual suggestion: Bing Bong’s sacrifice is a model of substitutionary atonement.

Summary of Substitutionary Atonement

Substitutionary atonement is one understanding of what happens at the crucifixion of Jesus. This understanding says something like: humanity is sinful/behaved wrongly/is bad, so God is angry with humanity and demands that they be punished and God be “satisfied.” Apparently, the way to satisfy God is with blood and suffering and death of an innocent. So God sends Jesus to satisfy God (the economics of such a transaction baffles me). Jesus suffers in place of you or me or humanity as a whole, which somehow makes things a-okay with God.

It’s obviously not my favorite way of understanding the atonement. Truthfully, it isn’t a beloved atonement model in many Christian circles as it fundamentally relies on an abusive understanding of God, then acts as though a benevolent victim Son makes up for the violently abusive Father as though that doesn’t pose problems for trinitarian unity.

Substitutionary atonement is also known as the atonement model that, it’s been said, “commits the sin” of thinking it’s the only singular way to understand the crucifixion — as though the generations of Christians who understood the crucifixion differently, before this model was developed, “weren’t really Christians.”

Thoughts on Bing Bong & Atonement

All that to say: When a student casually made this suggestion in the school Commons area, it couldn’t go unaddressed. We love Bing Bong, we cried at his memory-dump fade-away death. Certainly he wouldn’t be representing something that’s so problematic. … Right?

But the seeds of doubt and uncertainty were clearly planted, and an increasingly heated conversation followed.

I maintain that Bing Bong may be a model of Christ (and maybe a great way to talk to kids and adolescents about Christ), but that he is not a model of substitutionary atonement. There’s no angry third-party involved; the only third-party is Riley, the being they live and move within and for whom they want to do what’s best (which could make Riley into a God-figure, in this one way alone). But Riley isn’t angry and demanding the pain and death of one of the beings inside her. Riley doesn’t need to be “satisfied.” So Bing Bong isn’t substituting himself for Joy’s wrongs; he’s simply doing what is best for Riley — Joy has very little part in his decision at all — and it’s not about paying any kind of debt or covering over wrongdoing.

Which is when another student jumps in and says: There is a kind of debt and wrongdoing, at least in Joy’s emotional experience. Joy feels responsible for their circumstances, feels responsible for getting Sadness back safely, and feels responsible for Riley’s overall well-being. It’s the emotional “debt” of her guilt that Bing Bong pays. So if he’s a Christ figure, it is a model of substitutionary atonement.

And then another student: Why is this even a question? Bing Bong isn’t like Jesus in any other way, so he’s not a Christ figure.

To which I object: No literary Christ figure is ever like Christ in every way, or even in many ways. We use cultural (and human saint) parallels to give an image of just one aspect of Christ’s identity, life, death, or resurrection. (Which I do with Mad Max and Christ, and with a Rothfuss character and God, and will definitely keep doing, so if you’re interested in that, you should subscribe!)

Join the Conversation!

We never came to a conclusion. Is Bing Bong Christ-like in any way? Not at all? Does Bing Bong point us, in some way, to Christ? Does Bing Bong’s sacrificial death conform to the pattern of Christ’s death? What is it that pulls at our heartstrings, if not Christ? Are we just a group of people who take Pixar movies way too seriously?

Tell us what YOU think about Bing Bong! Weigh in below in the comments. Maybe together we can come to some kind of understanding.

April 5, 2016March 31, 2016

Mad Max: Fury Road: On the Blood, Breath, & Name

Max and Furiosa as an image of Christ and the Church - read on Literate Theology / KateRaeDavis.com

If you haven’t yet seen Mad Max: Fury Road — what are you waiting for?! Cancel your evening plans. Oh, and also, here’s your SPOILER ALERT. The scene I’ll be discussing is near the end of the film.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

The battle is over, the way home to the Citadel is clear, and Furiosa is dying. Max is over her, his face full of concern, attempting to diagnose and discern what she needs.

Jurisic, one of the Many Mothers, is able to tell Max what is happening. “She’s pumping air into her chest cavity. She’s collapsing her lungs one breath at a time.” Max apologizes as he stabs between her ribs to release the pressure. Jurisic again: “She’s exsanguinated. Drained all the blood.” And Max apologizes again as he connects the, as Nux called him, into a Blood Bag. And he tells her, for the first time, “Max. My name is Max.”

(If you want to watch the scene, I found it online: Max Saves Furiosa.)

I first watched this unfold in a packed, emotionally exhausted theatre as tears flooded down my face. What is it about this scene that is so impactful? And whatever that truth is, the emotional response indicates to me that it must be holding something of the divine — what is this scene teaching us, theologically?

Cruelty & Kindness

A forced act carries an entirely different meaning than the same act freely chosen.

Early in the film, the War Boys of the Citadel force Max to become a living blood bag in a dehumanizing show of cruelty and power.

Here near the end, though, Max willingly and urgently attaches his blood stream to hers. The same tube the empire had forced into his arm is now the very object that helps Max revive Furiosa’s life. What the empire had used for evil is now being used for good. It’s a redemptive act.

Which helps highlight, for me, how radical and subversive and grace-ful Jesus was in going to the cross. It was both moments at once. It should have been dehumanizing, and yet he did it in a way that was fully human, never losing (I like to think) his own sense of dignity and freedom.

Jesus has all the kindness and grace of Max-saving-Furiosa under the cruel circumstances of Max-saving-Nux.

An Image of Christ & the Church

The symbols at play in this scene are breath, blood, name.

Each, on its own, has an important history in the Judeo-Christian tradition. And the three are brought together in the one who breathes Spirit into and onto the Church, the one who spills blood for the church, the one named God With Us.

And then I thought that perhaps this scene could read as a sort of image or parable. In parable form, Furiosa might represent the corporate people of God, the Church. Max represents Christ. Jurisic, the Spirit.

To add some nuance: I am NOT saying that the person of Max has a one-to-one correlation to the person of Jesus. Rather, I’m saying that this relationship in this one moment can offer us a way to emotionally experience and understand that relationship in all time. It’s similar to the way that the hood-ornament moment offers an image of the crucifixion moment. I’m saying that when we have moments in which we can’t remember why Jesus’s spilled blood is good news or what it meant for Christ to breathe on us or to offer his blood for us, that the emotions we experience in this scene can help remind us, because they’re pointing to that moment.

I’m also not saying that any of this symbolism is intended by George Miller or anyone else involved in the making of Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s possible to be true to the story and for the Spirit to be at work within our human work of creating (indeed, I don’t know if there is any other way to create), as I get into in the Foundations series.

Ok. With that clarified. Here’s a reading of the “Max Saves Furiosa” scene in parable form (which is notably in the reverse of the Jesus story):

Christ is concerned for the Church. He is with her, near her, hovering over her. But to act, he seems to rely on the Spirit to tell him what the Church needs.

When the Spirit tells him that the Church needs air/wind/breath/spirit (in Hebrew and Greek, these are all conveyed with a singular word), Christ acts decisively so that the Church has the ability to receive it. (For Max, this looks like pushing a knife into her ribcage so she is able to receive air into lungs; in John 20, Christ breathes on his followers as he tells them to receive the Holy Spirit.)

Next the Spirit tells Christ that the Church is drained, that she has no life/blood within her. So Christ offers his blood. (Furiosa receives this through a tube; the Church receives it through Eucharist/Communion/Lord’s Supper.)

Finally, Christ reveals his identity. (For Max, this occurs through giving his name. For Christ, it occurs in his naming at birth and is shown in fulfillment in the resurrection.)

On the Name

A moment on Max’s name. Sometimes Max is short for Maximillian, which means “greatest.”

I like to think that this Max’s name is short for Maxwell, which means “great spring,” as in a life-giving spring of fresh water.

Which reminds me of that moment when Jesus talks with a woman at a well and refers to himself as living water.

Not to say that Max is fully the same as Jesus. But in this moment, this heightens the imagery that Max-as-life-source-for-Furiosa provide in an analogy of Jesus-as-life-source-for-the-Church (and also resolves the question: “Why tell her his name now?”).

Ascension

Jump to the very last moments of the film when Furiosa, the wives, and as many of the wretched as they can fit are crowded onto the ascending platform. Furiosa looks around and sees Max disappearing into the crowd, leaving her and the wives to do the work of re-structuring the systems of the Citadel into more sustainable ones, re-ordering the culture into one that restores the human dignity of the wretched.

It’s a reverse of how we understand ascension. In Christian tradition, Jesus is lifted into the heavens and leaves the disciples staring after him into the clouds.

Here (if we continue the metaphor), Jesus looks up as the Church ascends into the center of power structures in order to dismantle.

In John’s account, Jesus says that his followers will do greater things than he has done. I’ve never really understood what that meant, but I like the image offered in this last moment of Mad Max. Max gives breath and blood to Furiosa so that she can change the systems and redeem the Citadel. Jesus gives breath and blood to the Church so we can do likewise in our world.

This post is part of a series on the theology of Mad Max: Fury Road. Find the rest of the series here.

For discussion: Does reading this scene as an image of Christ and the Church change your understanding of Christ? the Church? their relationship? If so, how? Does it help or hinder?

March 29, 2016March 22, 2016

The Spirit of Symbols: Remixed Ritual

How Christian rituals began and how symbols became Christian rituals - on Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

The previous Foundations post covered the origin of symbol and ritual, using the example of water, up to the point of Jesus’s life.

In this post, more on symbols and rituals! Symbols that were remixed by Jesus; the way the Christian community ritualized that remixing; the way we understand those rituals today. In short: an overview on how Christian ritual began and how we got to where we are today. All of this is leading up to how Christians’ understanding of the use of elements and their symbolic meaning shapes our engagement with culture.

Shifting Symbols

Jesus was born in a particular place at a particular time, which means that he was born into a context. This might seem obvious, but I think we forget it when we talk about Jesus-in-the-present. We forget that the way Jesus is now is fundamentally different from the way Jesus was then, when he had a very specific body and face and voice in a culture that assigned meaning to all these things.

He was born into the Jewish tradition in the time of the Roman empire. Which means that there are two cultures at play here, each with their own nuanced understanding of symbolic objects. The culture of the Jewish people had well-established rituals and symbols using elements that were richly textured with history, story, and poetry. And the same was true of the Roman empire, with their own narratives and meanings.

Jesus seems to be quite familiar with both these cultures by the time he enters into adult ministry. He often remixes elements in order to give new symbolic meaning. Through remixing elements, Jesus shifts his audience’s understanding of the symbols, thus shifting their understanding of the world.

Shifting Symbolism with the Water Element

Water was a central part of the Jewish tradition. In the first lines of scripture, the Spirit of God dwells over water. In Exodus, water turns to blood to show God’s expansive power; the water of the Red Sea parts to liberate the people of Israel; water flows from a rock to sustain them. When Jesus is born, water is deeply meaningful and well-textured. And the multiplicity of these meanings — new life, liberation, sustenance — is ritualized through submersion into water called baptism.

Jesus is far from the first to use water as a symbolic element.

So when Jesus interacts with water, he’s often playing with the meaning of the symbol that already exists in order to re-connect those around him with the original potency of the element.

To take the first miracle in the gospel according to John: Jesus turns water into wine. Water, in the jars for ceremonial washing, is largely associated with purity. Not just physical cleanliness, but spiritual purity. Wine, like water, also has a rich symbolic history of joy, hospitality, and a foreshadowing of the banquet to which God invites us. So when Jesus puts wine into the jars for ceremonial washing, it’s a violation of religious custom that signals a deep connection between the place of the holy (ceremonial jars) and the substance of joyful hospitality (wine).

Jesus places the symbols in relationship to each other in a way that confronts the audience and points them to a deeper meaning that they may have been missing.

And that wedding where Jesus turned water into wine was in Cana, which is near the altar of the Roman god Dionysos. On his feast day, Dionysos would cause the streams to run with wine instead of water — Dionysus turned water into wine. So when Jesus does the same thing, in jars instead of flowing water, on a random weekend instead of a certain feast day, the Romans would have understood that Jesus is somehow more divine than their god.

In a single act with the same elements, Jesus confronts both Jewish and Roman symbols — which is to say, he messes with both their understandings of the world, in a way that draws them toward a new creation.

Ritualizing the Remix

As Jesus’s followers develop into a community, they do what all groups of humans do — they create rituals for their time together. For Christians, this means that they created rituals based on Jesus’s use of symbols. To early Christians (many of whom understood themselves as Jewish), much of the subversive use of these elements was intact; they understood the history that Jesus had been undermining, and are using the elements to now remind themselves that, in Jesus, creation is somehow made new.

Of course, for Christians today, much of that textural complexity of symbol has been lost. We didn’t grow up in Jewish homes under Roman rule. And while all that context is interesting for context and fuller understandings of the gospel (and I’ll even go so far as to say: it’s absolutely essential for anyone entrusted with scriptural interpretation through preaching), it isn’t essential for most people.

We don’t need to understand the Roman and Jewish contexts and symbolic understanding of the elements used in ritual in order to be impacted by these rituals. The element is still intuitively associated with its original functioning in the world, and we can rely on this for impact.

Let’s clarify with our water example.

A Water Ritual: Baptism

In the last Foundations post, we briefly touched on the ritualization of the water symbol into baptism.

By the time of Jesus’s birth, baptism was a solidified ritual in the Jewish community. Baptism was a required part of conversion, a repeated part of Jewish life, and a part of the ordination process. Baptism represented, at once, purification, restoration, and enculturation into the community.

When Jesus asks John to baptize him, he is both participating in this ritual and playing with it — the play has resulted in much debate over the centuries about what it means for the Holy One to participate in a ritual that signifies repentance and purification. But that’s a tangent I’ll resist for now.

Early Christians also practiced baptism. In New Testament texts, baptism is at once understood as a ritual of cleansing, adoption, identification with Christ, and death of the old self/rebirth of a new self.

Over time, Christian communities have moved between practices of infant and adult baptism, methods of immersion and sprinkling, baptism as a one-time deal or a repeated experience. There are communities today that represent each possible set of answers, and they are all in the wide stream of orthodoxy.

All of this is to say: Jesus stepped into a river once, remixing the way we understood baptism, and millions of people have since followed.

Perhaps it’s because of his example alone that we wade into the waters, but I doubt it.

Back to Elements

I think we follow Jesus into the baptismal waters because there’s something compelling going on in the symbol that water itself carries.

I was baptized in my early 20s. I was really excited and invited everyone, and many of my friends who are in the category of religious “nones” came. These are friends who weren’t familiar with the symbolic heritage of water in the Judeo-Christian tradition. They weren’t thinking about how the Spirit moved over the waters in creation. They weren’t remembering how God led Israel through water to freedom. They had no context of Jewish symbolic meaning for what it meant for Jesus to have been baptized (truthfully, at the time, neither did I).

And yet it was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. And when I came out of the waters, some of my “none” friends had tears in their eyes as they hugged me, the baptismal water transferring from my body to their sweaters.

What is it that makes this ritual so impactful, even for people who don’t have knowledge of the symbolic heritage?

I would argue that it goes back to the element itself. Water is inherently renewing. Our bodies are mostly made up of water. Our very lives depend on our ingesting water at regular intervals. On some level, our bodies know this, even if our minds don’t think of it very often. Water is a sort of permanent symbol for sustaining and renewing life.

This symbolic texture of water connects to us not at a “Christian” level, not merely in the intellect or belief system. This connects on a human level. The Christian community has simply developed that meaning in a certain way and uses it in a certain context. We did not give water its meaning. Meaning does not belong to us. Meaning is the work of the Spirit. Meaning belongs to God.

Next Time

In the next Foundations post, we’ll FINALLY get to the meat of what this all means for a Christian understanding of symbolism in culture today, how the Spirit continues to work through symbols, and why Christ keeps showing up in “secular” culture.

For discussion: Do you remember your baptism, or have you witnessed another’s? What struck you as meaningful in that moment? If you have other, non-baptismal memories with water that impacted you, share those!

January 19, 2016March 24, 2016

Drinking from the Font

Sermon: Holy Hospitality, on the Miracle of Water into Wine at the Wedding at Cana - follow blog Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

Reflections on John 2:1-11, delivered at St Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle.

“You give your people drink from the river of your delights.”

Imagine you’re on your way into church and feeling just a little parched — would you pause for a sip of water … from the baptismal font?

Let’s make it a little more appealing. Let’s say, one day, that the font was emptied of its usual water and filled with — whatever brings you joy: apple juice, Diet Coke with Lime, pinot noir, whatever — then would you drink from it?

This may seem like a strange hypothetical with which to begin a sermon, but today’s gospel is a strange miracle that begins Christ’s ministry. At a wedding, Jesus takes water, the sustaining elixir of life, and transforms that water into wine, a substance associated with rare celebrations of joy; the psalmist notes that wine makes glad the heart. Weddings were one of the rare times that people would have the opportunity to drink wine, where it is offered as a display of the new couple’s hospitality, and this must have been some wedding, because they ran out early. Jesus, being made aware of the problem, tells the servants to fill the nearby jars with water, which becomes wine — that the steward, not knowing where the wine had come from, says is good, and the celebration continues on.

What a strange miracle. Strange, certainly, because the creator of all that is, the creator of oceans and rain and grapes, the divine force behind growth and fermentation and metabolization, makes his first ever in-human-form display of power … in the corner of a wedding … where the only people who notice are the disciples who were already following him, and a small number of servants … and all for the seemingly insignificant cause of a party’s continuation.

Not only is this miracle strange, but there’s something strange in the narration of the miracle, because John makes sure the audience knows this detail: that nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used for Jewish purification rites, the kind used for ceremonial washing.

Now, when the text says “ceremonial washing” here — this is not simply a matter of washing one’s hands before getting in line for the buffet. Purification, for the Jewish people, for the guests at this wedding, was a highly spiritual matter, tied to holiness and sanctity. So while the stone jars are acceptable vessels for holy water and wine is acceptable at a celebration, you just wouldn’t put wine in the jars meant for ceremonial washing. It would be impure, unholy. Sacrilegious.

So when Jesus tells the servants to draw from the jars and bring it to the steward — I have to imagine that in their minds, it’s still water. Because you just wouldn’t give a man wine from a stone jar. I imagine their shock … when the steward puts it in his mouth, “not knowing where it had come from” and names it the best wine of the celebration.

It is shocking that Jesus seems to prank the steward into drinking unclean wine — worse, pranks him into enjoying unclean wine. Equally unnerving is the realization that he seems to violate his community’s ritual norms and customs on purpose. At a celebration of this size, wine would be stored in long clay jars with handles for easy pouring. Presumably, since there had been wine, there would have been some empty containers around, ready to be refilled.

But Jesus chooses the container for ceremonial washing, large jars with thick stone walls — actually, picture a slightly taller version of our baptismal font, remove the polish, and you’re pretty much there. Jesus chooses these vessels, these jars for ceremonial washing, knowing that the steward wouldn’t drink it if he knew where it came from.

We don’t hear about the rest of the party, but because the jars were basically immovable, the servants wouldn’t be able to circle with them to fill people’s cups. I imagine the guests, dressed in their best, faithful observers their religious customs, their cups running low, coming in pairs and small groups in search of more wine only to find themselves standing before the ceremonial washing jars … debating … would they accept this hospitality, would they imbibe of the wine that makes glad the heart, would they continue their joyful celebration —- or would they maintain their sanctity and purity?

Would you drink wine from a font in order to participate in celebration?

Because there is always freedom. It’s a choice. Jesus provides the wine in the ceremonial vessel, but we are always free to not drink it, we are free to prioritize our sanctity above it. But, at least as seems to be implied by the symbols of this miracle — ceremonial jar as sanctity and holiness, the wine inside as hospitality that leads to joy– to prioritize sanctity requires the rejection of the hospitality and subsequent joy that are being offered.

On the other hand, to drink the wine from the ceremonial container does not abolish sanctity. Jesus does not smash the ceremonial jars, does not condemn their use. Rather, he combines their symbolism with the symbol of wine in an unexpected way. You might say: Jesus does not abolish the law by breaking the jars, but rather fulfills the law — by filing the sacred with the joyful, by connecting holiness and hospitality.

By serving good wine from the stone jars for ceremonial washing, Jesus mixes symbols in a way that shows how the separation of the holy vessel from the liquid of celebration tempts us to privilege the spiritual, the clean, the holy — over and against the worldly, the bodily, the everyday joys that make glad the heart. By choosing to serve good wine from ceremonial jars, Jesus seems to suggest that it is not separation that is sacred, but what is sacred is participation in hospitality. What is holy is accepting hospitality. It seems to be right where our sensibilities and values want us to maintain separation that Jesus’s values invite us to hospitality as part of a larger celebration. We might even interpret the mixing of these symbols to mean that hospitality is holy.

Some decades ago, this parish chose to extend holy hospitality when others chose sanctity. The city was in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis, and many churches refused to bury those who had died from the disease, choosing the safety of sanctity above such potentially risky hospitality. By offering services to those in need, this parish participated in Christ’s holy hospitality.

We continue to participate in hospitality when we share food and drink each Sunday at coffee hour and each month at the Fatted Calf Cafe, carrying food and conversations across social and economic lines, across generational and political barriers, across football team loyalties.

And momentarily, we will be invited to share bread and wine with one another. While there is no one way to understand the Eucharist, today we might contemplate what it means to participate in sharing the cup, to participate in the holy hospitality to which Christ invites us.

Here, we are all guests at the celebration. Jesus has provided the bread as well as the wine. And it is good. Will you drink?

Sermon: Holy Hospitality, on the Miracle of Water into Wine - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis — The Baptismal Font at St Paul’s, by Julie Speidel: http://juliespeidel.com/public-installations/st-pauls-episcopal-church/

Questions: What hospitality is Christ offering that the Church not participating in? Where have we placed sanctity above hospitality — as a community or individually?

December 24, 2015June 8, 2019

Conjuring the Spirit of the Season

The absence of Christmas spirit is a presence in my home. I skipped out on the normal mantel decorations. I didn’t even take the stockings out of storage. My gift wrapping is minimal and sloppy. I just haven’t been able to tap into the spirit of the season. In a world celebrating a season of merriment, music, and memory-making, my internal experience has not been able to align.

My first response was to “fake it til I make it” — to go through the motions of Christmas cheer and observe the rituals in order to make the warm fuzzy feelings follow. That did not work.

A few voices in my life have suggested prayer practices. I’ve sat in my office and settled into the quietness of prayer, only to find that my prayers are laments. My prayers are calling God to do better, to intervene more strongly. A wonderful woman gifted me a gratitude journal, nudging me to acknowledge the goodnesses, no matter how small, that my daily life holds. And while it does keep away full blown depression and does orient me toward gratitude, the practice also highlights that there are many who do not have what I do: a loving spouse, stable housing, warm meals.

It strikes me that my concern has been my inability to tap into the spirit of the season, but perhaps I’ve been overwhelmed by advent: a season in which we hope for light while surrounded by darkness.

The darkness is literal in a solstice sense, in a lack of daylight hours, but darkness is also metaphorical and spiritual.

In advent, Christ — the light of the world — has not yet begun to shine. All we have to guide our steps is faint, distant starlight, traveling lightyears to get to us.

In advent, we remember that Mary carried in her self something divine that was growing and waiting to enter the world. We remember that carrying and birthing the divine is a marathon labor: it can feel like walking miles on swollen ankles only to find there is no rest to be had at the end of the journey.

This is Mary’s story, and the Christmas story, and it’s also our story, it’s a creation story. The work of allowing a message to cultivate inside one’s self, the labor of bringing it forth, the frail hope that it will be received by others. We each have a gift that is waiting to be birthed.

So perhaps my sorrow and failure of Christmas spirit are right where I am meant to be this advent season in which darkness has many manifestations.

And tomorrow is Christmas, and I have the starting place of hope: not that tomorrow the world will be different, but that tomorrow I may feel differently, which could alter the world.

December 18, 2015June 8, 2019

Christian (Anti-)Materialism

‘Tis the season for decking the halls, listening to carols, and trying to manage the expectations and social norms of gift-giving.

In recent years, I’ve noticed increasing discussion on wanting Christmas to be less materialistic and more focused on Jesus, most often applied to gift-giving. One trend is this gifting rhyme: “One thing they want, One thing they need, One thing to Wear, One thing to read.” Another method is that each person receives 3 gifts, representing the ones given by the wise men. Others write of themselves as anti-materialistic and advocate for a “gift-free Christmas,” spending time and money on those in most desperate need.

In a society where citizens are viewed primarily as consumers, the choice to consume less is a laudable defiance of cultural norms. And yet the language of becoming less materialistic or anti-materialism somehow chafes.

I think it chafes because Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. Christmas is about God becoming incarnate. God valued the material world so highly that God became fleshy, substantial, material. Throughout his life, Jesus seems to deeply understand the importance of the material. He understands the necessity of the material category we call food, and he fed people. He understands that a host’s social standing is deeply effected by the material stuff of drink, and he turned water into wine. God in Jesus understood that the material stuff of a having a body matters in one’s ability to be in relationship with humans, and Jesus was resurrected.

One way to orient the birthing moment of Christianity is the moment in which spirit became flesh. The good news of Christianity is that the God of love and blessing and peace came to earth to show us that the values of love and blessing and peace are most visibly manifested when they are embodied. Our values are niceties until we live them. Our values are most powerful when they show up in our material life.

Everything in the gospel texts points me to the conviction that we Christians are called to be more materialistic, called to be better materialists — even as we are called to resist consumerism. So while I’m an advocate for consuming less, in order to do so I think we need take materialism more seriously. We need to become a better materialists.

I’m certain that many who state the desire for less materialistic Christmases are actually aiming for less consumeristic Christmases, but it’s important to accurately name our concern, especially when representing our religion to children or outsiders. If we position Christianity as being against the material world, it can convey that the very worldly concerns of hunger and shelter and wound-tending don’t matter to Christians, when nothing could be further from the truth. If we teach anti-materialism we are too easily teaching contempt for the material world. When such contempt is taught, we should not be surprised by those who profess Christ while lacking compassion or urgency in caring for the poor: the body and its needs are themselves material, and so in that system of thinking, the body and its needs are worthy of contempt.

Perhaps the greatest response to the Christmas story in which God becomes material is to listen deeply to the call to be more materialistic, wildly materialistic, sincerely and passionately and deeply materialistic.

And by deepening our materialism, we must become more seriously anti-consumerism, for the material world becomes far too precious and valuable to simply use and dispose.

In following Jesus, may we follow in his embodied awareness that matter matters. May not only our Christmases but also our lives be distinct in that we passionately and sincerely value the material. May we hear the word “materialistic” not as a curse or insult, but as a blessing, a compliment, and as a call.

May your Christmas season be filled with love, joy, and peace, outpoured in beautiful, delicious, comforting material goodness for you and your loved ones.

December 7, 2015January 12, 2016

On Prayer & Policy-Making

Prayer & Policy-Making - Literate Theology / Kate Rae Davis

The divide is growing. In the wake of another mass shooting, the US has entered a now familiar liturgy: people demand changed policies; politicians offer prayers; nothing changes.

This time, rather than placating constituents, the prayers of politicians has been met with backlash. The New York Daily News released a bold cover: “God Isn’t Fixing This.” On twitter, #thoughtsandprayers was trending, with use ranging from a recognition of congress’s inactivity to blatant mockery of prayer practices in general.

Which of course created a backlash against that backlash: Christians defending prayer and speaking against such “prayer shaming.”

Part of what causes my heart to break so deeply in the midst of this conversation is that, across the illusion of the chasm between them, both sides have something beautiful to offer the other side. The Christians are correct in saying we should be praying; the secularists are correct in saying that there should be action.

What made Christianity radical is its anti-theist understanding of prayer, that prayer is never complete until it is followed by action. There are lots of articles and Bible-verse lists about how Jesus prayed: usually alone, often on a mountain or in a desert. But often the sentence about Jesus’s prayer is followed by a sentence about his action. Jesus prays and immediately after, he gathers and teaches. Jesus prays and immediately after walks onto the water to the disciples in a boat. Jesus prays and then raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus prays and then is arrested and goes to the cross.

For Jesus, prayer seems to be the inhale he takes before exhaling into action. He is filled through the inhale prayer so that he may exhale into action through preaching and miracles. For Jesus, prayer and action are so interwoven as to be inseparable; the prayer is not complete until exhaled into action.

We Christians often end our prayers with the words “in the name of Jesus Christ” or “through Jesus Christ.” We pray in and through Jesus. We receive eucharist that metabolizes us in and through the Christ. We receive baptism that has brought us in and through the church, which we also call the body of Christ.

In these ways, we are living members of the Christ to whom we pray in and through; we pray ourselves into being part of Christ, and pray ourselves into becoming part of the answer to the very prayers we speak. Christian theologian Ronald Rolheiser reminds us that “to pray as a Christian demands concrete involvement in trying to bring about what is pleaded for in the prayer.”

For an everyday example: consider someone who prays for healing for a sick neighbor, but never brings a meal or offers to drive to the doctor. She does the inhale of the prayer, but never completes it in the exhale; she prays as a theist and not as a Christian.

The dynamics might be similar in our nation-wide conversation about gun violence and prayer. Non-Christian people are calling Christians to action; they are calling us to exhale our prayers into action. It is not always done tactfully, kindly, or lovingly, but if we are open to their criticism in the way that Christ received death, perhaps we can develop ears to hear how deeply, prophetically Christ-like their call to action is.

Likewise, Christians are calling the country to prayer. We are right to say that it is impossible to exhale indefinitely; we must inhale in order to receive the Spirit that Jesus breathed upon us. In our inhale, we begin to grow in the ability to discern God’s will for humanity. In our inhale, we begin to let go of what our own desire may be for the future of our country. In order to act lovingly, our actions must originate in prayer.

Secular society is calling the church to action; the church is calling secular society to prayer.

Both sides have something beautiful to offer. We should be praying. Prayer is not complete until followed by action.

Each could be a blessing to the other, if we all soften our hearts enough to hear it. It’s risky. A soft heart is a much more easily broken heart. But perhaps broken heartedness is not an inappropriate response to such circumstances.