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 19, 2016July 18, 2016

Unity vs. Liberty in Captain America: Civil War

Unity and Liberty compete in Captain America: Civil War . And in our churches. Read on KateRaeDavis.com unity captain america

“Staying together is more important than how we stay together.”

In Captain America: Civil War, Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow says this to Steve Rogers / Captain America. It’s her attempt to keep him from leaving the Avengers, from dividing the Avengers into factions.

Romanoff puts their togetherness above all else. She believes that unity is more important than differences. She believes that what they gain from collaboration is more important than any regulations on that collaboration.

Romanoff is willing to have these hard conversations. She’s willing to engage the variety of beliefs. And she’s willing to mediate between these sad and stubborn men for the sake of “staying together.”

Rogers, of course, disagrees. We knew he would. It wouldn’t be much of a superhero movie if Romanoff’s heartfelt interventions with Rogers and Stark were heard and responded to in a mature and reasonable manner.

Rogers reveals his priority in his response to Romanoff: “What are we giving up to do it?”

He’s focused on what they would each lose in order to stay together. Rogers believes liberty matters more than unity. He believes that freedom to live his personal ideals is greater than collaboration.

I love that this conversation is set in a church.

Because this conversation is always happening in the Church.

Following the memorial service, Romanoff and Rogers are alone in the sanctuary when they have this conversation.

I love it because the debate between unity and liberty is the conversation that’s taken place — continues to take place — in the long narrative of church history.

We’re always debating how to maintain unity while trying to discern and follow the movement of the Spirit.

The trick is that the movement of change looks like an improvement and progress to some. Like it does to Stark in the movie. And at the same time, it feels constrictive and dangerous to others. Like it does to Rogers.

How do we discern what’s true? How do we discern what the Spirit wants? How do we discern the balance between unity and freedom when we hear the Spirit differently?

For instance: The Episcopal Church (the USA branch of the Anglican church) was in conversations around the ordination of women to the priesthood. The sentiment was that we couldn’t do it until we all did it together. At least, it was until a few bishops, in very Captain America fashion, gathered and ordained women, forcing the conversation — and the church — to come up with a different action. They felt that what we were giving up for the sake of unity (namely, women’s voices in church leadership) wasn’t worth the cost.

The Church of England had a different answer: they valued unity above all, and so went much slower. Nearly 20 years slower in ordaining women to the priesthood. But they managed to go through that shift with less division.

Right now, many denominations are in the midst of similar debates.

The United Methodist Church, right now, is in the midst of this debate. The Western Division elected a lesbian as their bishop in a claim for liberty — and in defiance of church rules. Now the wider United Methodist Church needs to decide: Will they value liberty or unity?

I’m not sure if I’m devoted entirely to liberty or to unity. There’s a part of me that wants to cheer the UMC Western Division for boldly following the Spirit and standing for love and justice. And there’s part of me that feels the sadness of possible division. That wants to take hands with those who don’t agree or don’t understand and help them take just the next step toward acceptance. That wants to help people stay together as much as possible.

In Captain America: Civil War, the narrative “wants” us to side with Rogers’ ideals.

We hear this in Sharon Carter’s eulogy of her aunt, right before the conversation between Romanoff and Rogers:

[Margaret Carter] said, compromise when you can. When you can’t, don’t. Even if everyone is telling you that something wrong is something right. Even if the whole world is telling you to move. It is your duty, to plant yourself like a tree, look them in they eye and say, ” No…you move.”

The main piece of Margaret Carter’s advice here was “compromise when you can.” And yet Sharon manages to take the nuance, the exception to the rule, and to transform it into the central piece of advice. I doubt this was Margaret’s emphasis — she sounds more like Romanoff in her initial advice to compromise. Her advice is a call for unity. Sharon adds the emphasis in order to give a message to Rogers — and to move the narrative (and the audience) into more sympathy for the team liberty.

I had hoped that Stark and Rogers would move towards one another in the compromise that Margaret (via Sharon) calls for. That they would enter into the messy tension of unity and liberty and figure out a way they can be together and not feel constrained in the process.

Alas, I hope for the Kingdom.

By the end of the movie, the writers believe they’ve swayed us far enough to team Captain America that it’s okay for Rogers to perform a jail break and that we’ll be … if not happy about it, at least tolerant of it.

But I was disappointed. Rogers strikes me as reckless and individualistic, refusing to see the problems of his actions in a larger system. His actions are congruent with his own values, but he can’t see past his own values to understand his actions’ impact on others or to understand the way his actions function in a larger system.

Which could be seen as the criticism of the movie: Captain America is a stand-in for USAmerica. And Rogers is how the rest of the world, perhaps, views us: as a nation that lives our own values and ideals, imposing them on the world without care what other people or groups they hurt, because freedom and capitalism.

Back to the fact that the unity-or-liberty conversation happens in a church:

You only need to glance at a list of denominations in USAmerica to know that divisive idealism can’t be the direction we continue to follow. We continue to fracture and split the Church, and each time we do, an appendage of the Body of Christ is amputated. Such individualism and divisiveness should be a cause of lament, not rejoicing.

And that’s what I felt when I saw the empty cells of the Avengers’ prison. Not rejoicing in their freedom, but deep sadness at an action that would further fracture the Avengers, their relationship with UN, and their relationship with the global community.

In the comments…

Which do you, personally, tend to value more: unity or individual liberty?

Which does your family value more? your community? your parish? your denomination?

How does that value manifest?

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May 26, 2016June 8, 2019

Remixing Symbols: Rosemary and Holy Water, Remembrance and Baptism

In the Episcopal Church, there are certain days on which the priest takes branches cut from the church garden, dips them in holy water, and shakes the branches over the congregations’ heads. It’s a baptism symbol that holds a reminder of our baptisms, a reminder of our identity as the people of God, a reminder that we participate in death and resurrection.

Because my church is in Seattle, our garden holds a rosemary plant. Here, rosemary grows like a beloved native weed. The plant in our garden, bordering the parking lot, is always overgrown, so its branches are always the first to be cut when it’s time to remember our baptism.

Remembering our baptism carries a particular scent: equal parts incense and rosemary.

As a result of this, whenever I cook with rosemary, I find myself remembering my baptism.

My community hasn’t assigned any particular meaning-making to this happenstance connection between rosemary and baptism. If there is any intent in its use, it is to convey the connection between the church and our local place. Or, perhaps, a symbol of provision and abundance.

So I researched the meaning of rosemary — most plants have a symbolic connotation, even if we no longer live by what they once meant.

Rosemary is a symbol of remembrance for the dead. Mourners used to throw it into graves, the way we might today throw a rose onto the casket. (Roses, of course, are themselves symbols: red for love, yellow for friendship, white for youth.) In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Ophelia says “There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.”

The branches dipped in holy water is one of those moments where symbols align and intermingle and remix without intention on behalf of the artist. I must believe that the Spirit is at work in such remixing.

Because what the practice does — without any need of human intention (though it does require attention) — is it connects death and resurrection. The priest takes rosemary — a symbol of grief, mourning, and death — and uses it as the means to sprinkle the assembly with baptismal water — a symbol of joy, new life, resurrection.

Using rosemary to sprinkle holy water on the congregation connects the remembrance of my baptism more solidly to the remembrance that, in some way, the person I used to be has died.

I remember her. Remember who she was, how she behaved, how it felt to be her. Sometimes, I even miss her. I miss the height and depth at which she experienced emotion, the high degree of passion in her relationships, her quit wit and cutting tongue. She moved through life with little discernment, often finding whichever option meant less pain (bruises were so much easier to tolerate than loneliness). In many ways, it was easier and more fun to be her. Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.

And that memory, the memory of who she was and what my life as her was like, makes the droplets of cool water that much more powerful. The water connects me with my baptismal identity, my post-baptism reality. The water reminds me that I not only died but rose again with Christ.

The impact of remembering that new identity is much more powerful when remembered in contrast to what died.

As I’ve grown in my baptismal identity, I’ve gained a capacity to understand my emotions and care for myself in ways that are less destructive. I’ve developed stable and loving relationships that I can actually experience as loving. I’ve learned to tolerate pain in the present because of my hope for the future.

And then I reclaim my baptismal identity. It may have been easier and more fun to be the person I used to be. But the person I’ve become is more loving, more joyful, more compassionate.

And I think I’d rather be as someone who loves joyfully than as someone who has fun.

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May 10, 2016May 4, 2016

Christian Ritual & Developing Eyes to See God in Secular Culture

Developing Eyes to See God in 'Secular' Culture - the processes of Christian symbol and ritual - KateRaeDavis.com

Maybe it’s confusing that Christians can’t seem to see rain in a film without naming it baptism. Maybe you’re a Christian who would like to more readily see God’s active presence in the novels you read and movies you watch. Either way, this post will help by explaining how Christian sight is formed to see God in secular culture.

For context: this is post #3 in a series on symbols. The first post covered the origin of symbol and ritual, using the example of water. The second discussed Jesus’s remix of symbols, his followers’ ritualization of that remix, and the way we understand those rituals today, continuing with the example of water.

In this post, I’ll discuss the way some Christians — or, at the very least, how I — understand cultural narratives that use elements of symbolic or ritual meaning in the Christian community. I’ll stick with the symbol of water and point to the presence of baptism is present in the film The Shawshank Redemption. (Although this could also be done with many other symbols and concepts, such as breath and blood or the practice of witnessing martyrs; maybe future posts).

If you’re interested in other narratives that contain symbolic baptisms, click here to download my list of 15 movies and novels!

Pointing to the Shared Nature

Ok. So we covered how symbols develop based on the natural, inherent function of an object or element. And we discussed how those became symbols and rituals within just one community of people — Christians.

An object used in a ritual or as a storied symbol is always pointing back to its inherent function.

And in a sense, if you begin to see that object as important in a certain way, you learn to see that object as a living symbol. The object’s presence is always pointing to the inherent function because it now has become inseparable.

And if you’re in a community that uses the ritual, the presence of an object will trigger associations with both its function and its symbolic and ritual meaning.

I tried to make a simple diagram of this and it got complicated quickly, but maybe it helps:

The linking factor is actually the natural function of the object that is inherent to the object and that the object cannot avoid. Spiritual formation simply trains sight for the link. The link doesn’t necessarily exist “naturally,” but it does exist, in a very real way, in our worldview.

This is getting a bit abstract, so let’s turn back to our water example.

Water and Baptism Share Rejuvenation

Water always points back to its inherent function of providing, sustaining, renewing life.

Water, for Christian practitioners, has a storied meaning: the Spirit hovered over water before the creation of the cosmos; the waters of the Red Sea parted to liberate the people of Israel; Jesus refers to himself as living water.

On top of that, water is used in the ritual of baptism, which carries all those stories and then has its own stories on top of it — both the community stories in the ways we “remember our baptism” (for instance, in my church, the priest uses rosemary branches to “sprinkle” water on the congregation) and also in our individual stories.

Much of our time in spiritual formation is spent near water, wet from water, telling stories about water — all in ways that point it back to water’s inherent function as life-giving and add texture to that narrative by saying that God (and God in Jesus) is life-giving.

With water and baptism, that visual looks something like this:

The link is that both water and baptism point to renewal of life — the former on a physical level, the latter on a spiritual level. Through stories and practices that link water to this spiritual level, it becomes natural to begin to see water as operating at both levels all the time. The world is infused with the holy. The lines between the sacred and the secular blur to the point of becoming inconsequential.

Christian View of Symbols

In film and story, objects that are often used only for their original, natural, inherent function.

And then Christians claim that there’s something more going on, that it’s a symbol for this Christian ritual or moment.

We’re not claiming that the director/author/creator intended the moment to point to Christ. Rather, we’re claiming that Christ — the force that energizes the cosmos with an abundance of goodness and love — is present in the object that the director chose to use.

Baptism in The Shawshank Redemption

Let’s look at the infamous “baptism” scene in The Shawshank Redemption. Imagine Andy’s escape from prison on a cloudless night. He crawls through the sewer and emerges into the clear night sky, covered in shit, wipes himself off, walks away. Pretty anticlimactic, right? Lacking in some sense of hope and rejuvenation.

On a very practical level, the rain is necessary to clean off the protagonist for the audience’s eyes, to literally wash away the shitty image of despair and to give the audience a feeling of cleanliness and newness.

On a non-religious symbolic level, the filmmakers may have thought the rain provides an image of freshness and of cultivating new life — the rain marks the possibility of new life for Andy just as it does for young plants.

Water is more than just water when it's part of your story of salvation - read more on KateRaeDavis.com — Photo from The Shawshank Redemption, Warner Bros. Pictures

But Christians have a storied history of water, moments and narratives that adds texture to the way we view water. In the Episcopal Church, the following prayer is spoken over the water immediately before baptism, summarizing the stories that we remember when we engage with water:

We thank you, Almighty God, for the gift of water.
Over it the Holy Spirit moved in the beginning of creation.
Through it you led the children of Israel out of their bondage
in Egypt into the land of promise. In it your Son Jesus
received the baptism of John and was anointed by the Holy
Spirit as the Messiah, the Christ, to lead us, through his death
and resurrection, from the bondage of sin into everlasting life.

Through the lens of Christian narrative and symbol, Andy is being delivered out of bondage, is moving through a resurrection moment, is entering everlasting life right in the midst of this world.

That is not to claim that the director intended the moment to be baptismal. The link exists because water by its inherent nature sustains life. The symbol will always be connected to baptism for those whose eyes are trained to see — not as its progenitor but as a sibling — because both have their root in water.

Some More Baptisms

If you’re curious about other baptismal moments of film and literature, I made a free resource for you! In the free resource library, you’ll find a list of baptismal scenes from film and literature. It’s good for discussions with your friends about the meaning of baptism. Some of them are great to talk with kids about the transformation that occurs in baptism. If you’re in a preaching position, it’s an excellent resource for sermon illustrations. Get access here:

Christian Spirituality of Symbols

When Christians point out the ways in which non-Christian narrative hold Christian truths, the intent isn’t to oppress or appropriate the art for their own purposes.

The intent is to show that God is active and alive in the world, to reaffirm for ourselves the truth that there is something in the world that is concerned with humanity’s well-being and sustenance and rejuvenation.

On a physical level, perhaps that something is simply the intermixing of hydrogen and oxygen molecules. But on a spiritual level, that something is the divine force of the created cosmos who manifests in molecules and manipulates them for the sake of our

I want to hear from you!

What are some of your favorite symbolic baptism scenes in movies and novels?

What are some of your favorite songs that include water imagery?

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.

February 26, 2016March 24, 2016

Christian Values Voters

Today, I’d like to add to the definition of “Christian values” Voters. Yes, this is religion and politics — our culture’s sacred taboos in polite conversation — brought together.

The Meaning of Wealth

First, some words from G.K. Chesterton on a Christian understanding of the trustworthiness of the rich. The presidential candidates’ net worth differs depending on who you ask, as does the meaning of their worth. Most often, I seem to hear candidates’ wealth discussed as a sign of respectability, responsibility, and trustworthiness. Our culture equates the accumulation of wealth with responsible citizenry, achievement, and moral goodness. For the record, both parties have candidates with considerable wealth. On the Dem side: Clinton is worth something between $15-45 million; Sanders around half a million. On the Rep side: the estimated worth of Drumpf is over $4,000 million (I find it helpful to remember that a billion is a thousand million); Bush around $22 million; Carson somewhere between $10-26 million; Kasich around $10 million; Cruz around $3 million; Rubio something under half a million.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Dover, 2004), p111-112:

Only the Christian Church can offer any rational objection to a complete confidence in the rich. For she has maintained from the beginning that the danger was not in man’s environment, but in man. […] If we assume the words of Christ [on the impossibility of a camel going through the eye of a needle] to have meant the very least that they could mean, His words must at he very least mean this–that rich men are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. You will hear everlastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. The fact is, of course, that the rich man is bribed; he has been bribed already. That is why he is a rich man. The whole case of Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. [,,,] In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment.

Everyone is, to some degree, inclined to immorality, even if they have millions in the bank. Chesterton’s point is that we are all human, and any of us may morally fail and fall.

So then a better question than “how much wealth do candidates have?” is often suggested to be “how much do candidates donate?” But I’d propose an even more relevant question as: “What do candidates spend their wealth on: personally, professionally, and through donations?” Spending a small fortune on a private jet is not the same as spending a small fortune on a child’s college education. And I’m less impressed with someone’s million dollar donation if it went to renovating an opera house when there are people starving in our own country.

Fear and Love

Below is a portion from Shane Hipps’s Selling Water By the River on love (which I think all Christians can agree is pretty highly ranked as a Christian value) and fear. I won’t add to the plethora of opinion pieces on the use of fear in this presidential debate, or the ways a certain candidate (ahem) is exploiting fear responses for votes.

Shane Hipps, Selling Water by the River (Jericho Books, 2012), p 86-87:

Darkness and light do not exist together. They have never met.

Darkness is always at the mercy of light. If you want to be rid of darkness, light a lamp.

In 1 John 4:18, he writes, ‘There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear. What John writes here is deeply insightful for two reasons. First, he does not use the expected dualism between love and hate; instead he sets fear at odds with Love. This is truly revealing, as it shows us that behind all hate is really a deeper problem of fear.

Second, we are shown that the relationship between love and fear is the same as that of light and darkness. Love and fear cannot occupy the same space. Moreover, Love and fear are not equal and opposite forces. Fear is always at the mercy of Love. One way to see it is that fear is actually the absence of Love, not the opposite. The lesson here is an important one. Love has no opposite. No force in the universe rivals it.

A candidate’s courage/bravado is artificial if the candidate is the one instilling the fear in the populace. It’s easy to fight an enemy when you know the enemy is a phantom you have created. Perhaps we should collectively take a few deep breaths to evaluate the legitimacy and source of a fear. Perhaps we should quiet the surging adrenaline we all experience in shouting matches, in order to listen for gentler whispers of love.

Christian Values

These certainly aren’t the only criteria that Christians will — or should — use when completing their ballots. But we should certainly evaluate the culture’s equation of wealth with respectability. And the capacity for Love is certainly worthy of our attention and consideration. When we claim to vote with Christian values, we shouldn’t mean that we’re looking at candidates stances on one or two select issues (however important those two are, they are only two in a much wider, global picture). We should examine the wide array of Christian values that frame an entire person and their way of being in the world. And I do mean the world: it’s too easy to forget that the majority of the President’s job description is about foreign affairs, not domestic issues.

For discussion: If you’re Christian, what stances on issues do you look for in candidates? What life-values do you look for?

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.

prayer corner — Where I pray — and then write.

December 1, 2015June 8, 2019

Gratitude for Hidden Things

As we transition into the advent season, I find myself full of gratitude and grief for the hidden things — the emotions, experiences, remembrances, and hopes that are invisibly working and growing inside myself.

I am grateful for the rhythms and rituals of the season. Many of my rituals are familiar across the country: a Thanksgiving meal with gathered friends, a trip outside the city to fuss over finding the perfect Christmas tree, crafting perfectly chosen (though less-than-perfectly made) gifts.

These weeks in anticipation of Christmas remind me of how embodied my life is, remind me that my most meaningful experiences are my most physical ones. The texture of a certain sweater; the scent of pine in the living room; the taste of white peppermint mochas in vibrant red cups. The concepts of the holiday season are hidden things — joy, charity, patience, faith. And these virtues only become invisibly manifest in my inner experience through their cultivation expressed in the tangible.

I forget that too quickly.

It’s been strung-together months of having forgotten to remember that my body needs to be inhabited in order for my heart to be warmed. Which underlies a lot of the grief I mentioned earlier; I have been in a season of depression. Depression is another hidden thing, an experience that is real and powerful despite being invisible.

It seems to me that, whereas the warming hidden things are cultivated by embodiment, my depression is cultivated by disembodiment. By overly-indwelling the intellect, by seeking an orienting goal for my vocational pursuits, by getting lost in explorations through possible futures.

I’ve been thinking a lot, this week, about Mary. I find it comforting that Mary must have also felt this tension between gratitude and grief. Even as she felt her fiancee withdraw from the promise of marriage, even as she wondered how she would provide for herself and her child if abandoned, even as she encountered the stigma of a pregnancy out of wedlock, even as her family (I imagine) shamed or shunned her — in the midst of these griefs, God was becoming flesh in her womb, God was becoming flesh from her own flesh.

My body follows the rituals and rhythms. My body is faithful to the actions I associate with advent, in hope that such faithfulness might cultivate some of the hidden virtues and lessen my hidden sorrow.

Though, if my past is any indication of my future, I will likely always have at least some measure of that sorrow with me. But if Mary felt this grief-gratitude tension as I do, then Mary is already with me, even as her womb works in the early stages of the process to bring God with us.