There’s a verse in Isaiah that has always spoken to me and, I suspect, a lot of people, for its sheer poetry, opening up an acutely wonderful idea.
“The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” (11:9)
Because it is so poetic it could be dismissed as little more, a lucid metaphor for a flight of fancy or, at best, something real but postponed for a long-distant supernatural future.
But I’d like to report that at the end of our last bible study we stood in a circle with our eyes shut and our hands spread before us palm upwards, and we felt the reality of an earth, a physical environment, that communicated the deep presence of God.
Don’t get me wrong. This is no claim to a mystical experience or to a special ritual for initiates of Wood Hath Hope. That is precisely why I’m reporting it: because it is not that. Because this thing belongs to everyone.
We were studying the book of Isaiah, from the point of view of the temple, and we were seeing how for the whole book of Isaiah the temple is not really important, but the city which surrounds it is. The Book of Isaiah exalts the city of Zion, of Jerusalem, as the place where God’s plan for the earth and humankind will be accomplished. It involves such marvelous features as the end to war, the end of violence (including among animals), the abundance of food and wine to drink for everyone, all the way to the end of death itself. These elements of biblical prophecy have been consistently played down in favor of the “heavenly elsewhere” of Platonized theology, and of standard church preaching and popular imagination. And why not? It is so much easier to get people to believe in, and pay coin for, some mechanism of a happy afterlife rather than an unlikely metamorphosis of the crappy present one.
But what I’m talking about is not a matter of preaching, of playing to the cultural preconceptions of a mass culture whose preconceptions the Christian church has helped reinforce. (By the way, when did Jesus ever talk about “going to heaven when you die”?). Rather it is the here and now transformation of our constructed sense experience by the power of the Word, by the power of a set of signs and symbols which speak to and release our deepest earthly truth.
In concrete what this means is that when we stood on the earth in the power of Isaiah’s words we stood on an earth freed from violence and death. And when we placed our hands and fingers out into the air we were touching molecules set free from the futility of death by the Holy Spirit of love. These are not false or phantasmal experiences, but the shaping of our highly moldable sense apparatus (technically it’s called neural plasticity) by the redemptive speech of the bible working in and through the Risen Christ.
There’s a feedback loop from the inspired language to our bodies passing through the new creation that Christ has already is. Indeed if Christ is physically risen what other earthly reality could Christians possible refer to except the one that is radically transformed in him?
The feeling may only last for the few moments in the slipstream of the study and its signs, but we remember it and know it’s there and are able continually to base our actions in it.
And that is why we “study”: reading and thinking about these written signs, in and through Christ, enables our human senses to be continually formed and re-formed until new creation becomes second nature.
Imagine what would happen to the Christian movement if every time Christians met they placed themselves in the power of the Word within a transformed earth!
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Sacred Space #2
Here is the second study summary in our series on sacred space. Peace-Linda
Jeremiah’s condemnation of the temple 10/15/10
Jeremiah had a long prophetic life spanning 45 -50 years in the 7th century BCE. He began prophesying in the reign of Josiah, king of Judah. Josiah is often considered one of the better kings because he instituted a reform to clear the land of the worship of other gods. Josiah was killed in a battle against the Egyptians at the plain of Megiddo. This was the site of numerous battles led by various armies, including those of the Canaanites, Egyptians, Napoleon and the British. Megiddo is also the supposed site of the great future battle of Armageddon. Nazareth lies about eight miles from the central Megiddo highway, and it marks the beginning of the territory of Galilee. In this particular battle, Judah had sided with the emerging Babylonian empire against the Egyptians, who were allies of the Assyrians. Josiah, despite being a righteous king, was defeated. It seemed as though God had abandoned Judah.
Jehoiachim, Josiah’s successor, became king in 609 BCE. He aligned himself with Egypt against Babylon. He was cynical – contemptuous and dismissive of Jeremiah. It is during the same year that Jehoiachim ascended to the throne that Jeremiah gives his powerful sermon against the temple. In 598 BCE Jehoiachim dies. The following year Babylon attacks and Jehoiachin (Jehoiachim’s heir, then only eighteen years old) immediately surrenders. Because of his decision not to fight, the city is not destroyed - but the king and about several thousand hostages of import are taken into captivity.
After ten years the remaining officers, court and priests, under the lead of Zedekiah, choose to rebel. They believe that the Temple is invincible. Jeremiah, in a hugely unpopular move, preaches against rebellion, but his words go unheeded. The Babylonian army returns to destroy Jerusalem, burning everything and tearing down the Temple. The people are exiled to Babylon, with just a handful of the poor left behind. Jeremiah, on the basis of his favorable prophetic message, is offered certain privileges by the Babylonians should he return with them. He declines – opting to stay in Jerusalem. The Babylonian-appointed governor is killed and those responsible escape to Egypt. Jeremiah goes with them, staying faithful to Yahweh when his companions become disillusioned with their faith and turn to the gods of Egypt. Jeremiah prophesies against them and, according to tradition, they kill him.
Jeremiah’s life is in many ways the autobiography of a failure. He gets to prophesy at perhaps the worst time in Jewish history - he complains and laments. Almost in spite of himself, he is driven to speak unpopular messages to people unwilling to hear. “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everybody mocks me. For whenever I speak. I must cry out, I must shout, ‘violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long” (Jer 20:7-8).
Twenty years into his career he gives the sermon found in Jer 26:1- 24 predicting the destruction of the Temple. At this time Jerusalem had a fully fledged temple cult – with its architecture, rituals, priests and sacrifices. Jeremiah foretells disaster – Jerusalem will be like Shiloh (a sacred Israelite site from before the time of the kingdoms, famously destroyed, probably by the Philistines). Shiloh was the symbol of a ruined place. If the Israelites do not change their ways then the Lord will send a mighty force to destroy the Temple.
Chapter 7 gives another account of the same prophesy. Jer 7: 30-34 alludes to the practice of child sacrifice – an abomination to God. “They go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire – which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind” The site Topheth is another name for Gehenna, which lies south of the Mount of Olives. In New Testament times it became the site of the city incinerator. Jesus refers to this place when he uses it as an example of a fiery pit that never goes out.
Jeremiah frequently speaks out against sacrifice. Jer 7:21-23 suggests that the legislation found in Exodus and Leviticus is not from God. God does not want blood sacrifice, rather obedience. Jer 7: 5-7 again calls for justice rather than the shedding of innocent blood. This has to mean the blood of the sacrificial animals. The implication is that killing animals for sacrifice is not God’s will. When Jesus clears the temple before his arrest he quotes from this passage in Jeremiah: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jer 7:11). Where Jesus’ message is of repentance and forgiveness, Jeremiah threatens the worst. If the people do not change they face ultimate destruction.
Sacrifice is present historically in all human cultures. There is something deep within us that calls out for innocent blood as a way to make things right. Sacrifice is a lightening rod for the anger and energy of the group against its enemies. The act of violence brings a transient sense of peace to the group, as the group violence is discharged through the sacrificial victim.
Jeremiah and the other prophets speak out against the Temple and sacrifice. They are generally suspicious of temple sacrifice exhorting the people instead to act justly and embrace mercy as the way to gain God’s favor. Sacrifice is a human not a divine institution.
In Chapters 30 - 31 Jeremiah preaches from the perspective of exile. In 31:31-34 he describes the new covenant that God will make with his people. God’s law will be written on people’s hearts. There is no more need for a Temple because the people will all know the Lord –will be in relationship with him. The tone has changed from threat to promise and redemption. God is on their side and has a plan – an image of a reconciled humanity. Matthew has Jesus using these words when he tells his disciples at the last supper that the cup is “my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (MT 26:28).
After the return from exile, and despite the witness of Jeremiah, the Temple was rebuilt more splendidly than before. It was gradually developed until, by the time of Jesus, it had become one of the wonders of the ancient world - its dome covered in goldleaf. It is estimated that over a million people made the pilgrimage there during the Passover – the Temple must have been awash with the blood of all of those animals. Its final destruction in 70 AD by the Romans (and foretold by Jesus) led to a huge crisis for the Jewish people, surmounted only by the Rabbinic written tradition, not depending on Temple. The deep need in people for violence and blood sacrifice is so strong that only a transformation of our hearts that goes deeper still can overturn it. This call to enter into a transformed humanity is what lies at the heart of the gospel and is the witness of the crucifixion.
Jeremiah’s condemnation of the temple 10/15/10
Jeremiah had a long prophetic life spanning 45 -50 years in the 7th century BCE. He began prophesying in the reign of Josiah, king of Judah. Josiah is often considered one of the better kings because he instituted a reform to clear the land of the worship of other gods. Josiah was killed in a battle against the Egyptians at the plain of Megiddo. This was the site of numerous battles led by various armies, including those of the Canaanites, Egyptians, Napoleon and the British. Megiddo is also the supposed site of the great future battle of Armageddon. Nazareth lies about eight miles from the central Megiddo highway, and it marks the beginning of the territory of Galilee. In this particular battle, Judah had sided with the emerging Babylonian empire against the Egyptians, who were allies of the Assyrians. Josiah, despite being a righteous king, was defeated. It seemed as though God had abandoned Judah.
Jehoiachim, Josiah’s successor, became king in 609 BCE. He aligned himself with Egypt against Babylon. He was cynical – contemptuous and dismissive of Jeremiah. It is during the same year that Jehoiachim ascended to the throne that Jeremiah gives his powerful sermon against the temple. In 598 BCE Jehoiachim dies. The following year Babylon attacks and Jehoiachin (Jehoiachim’s heir, then only eighteen years old) immediately surrenders. Because of his decision not to fight, the city is not destroyed - but the king and about several thousand hostages of import are taken into captivity.
After ten years the remaining officers, court and priests, under the lead of Zedekiah, choose to rebel. They believe that the Temple is invincible. Jeremiah, in a hugely unpopular move, preaches against rebellion, but his words go unheeded. The Babylonian army returns to destroy Jerusalem, burning everything and tearing down the Temple. The people are exiled to Babylon, with just a handful of the poor left behind. Jeremiah, on the basis of his favorable prophetic message, is offered certain privileges by the Babylonians should he return with them. He declines – opting to stay in Jerusalem. The Babylonian-appointed governor is killed and those responsible escape to Egypt. Jeremiah goes with them, staying faithful to Yahweh when his companions become disillusioned with their faith and turn to the gods of Egypt. Jeremiah prophesies against them and, according to tradition, they kill him.
Jeremiah’s life is in many ways the autobiography of a failure. He gets to prophesy at perhaps the worst time in Jewish history - he complains and laments. Almost in spite of himself, he is driven to speak unpopular messages to people unwilling to hear. “O Lord, you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everybody mocks me. For whenever I speak. I must cry out, I must shout, ‘violence and destruction!’ For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long” (Jer 20:7-8).
Twenty years into his career he gives the sermon found in Jer 26:1- 24 predicting the destruction of the Temple. At this time Jerusalem had a fully fledged temple cult – with its architecture, rituals, priests and sacrifices. Jeremiah foretells disaster – Jerusalem will be like Shiloh (a sacred Israelite site from before the time of the kingdoms, famously destroyed, probably by the Philistines). Shiloh was the symbol of a ruined place. If the Israelites do not change their ways then the Lord will send a mighty force to destroy the Temple.
Chapter 7 gives another account of the same prophesy. Jer 7: 30-34 alludes to the practice of child sacrifice – an abomination to God. “They go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire – which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind” The site Topheth is another name for Gehenna, which lies south of the Mount of Olives. In New Testament times it became the site of the city incinerator. Jesus refers to this place when he uses it as an example of a fiery pit that never goes out.
Jeremiah frequently speaks out against sacrifice. Jer 7:21-23 suggests that the legislation found in Exodus and Leviticus is not from God. God does not want blood sacrifice, rather obedience. Jer 7: 5-7 again calls for justice rather than the shedding of innocent blood. This has to mean the blood of the sacrificial animals. The implication is that killing animals for sacrifice is not God’s will. When Jesus clears the temple before his arrest he quotes from this passage in Jeremiah: “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jer 7:11). Where Jesus’ message is of repentance and forgiveness, Jeremiah threatens the worst. If the people do not change they face ultimate destruction.
Sacrifice is present historically in all human cultures. There is something deep within us that calls out for innocent blood as a way to make things right. Sacrifice is a lightening rod for the anger and energy of the group against its enemies. The act of violence brings a transient sense of peace to the group, as the group violence is discharged through the sacrificial victim.
Jeremiah and the other prophets speak out against the Temple and sacrifice. They are generally suspicious of temple sacrifice exhorting the people instead to act justly and embrace mercy as the way to gain God’s favor. Sacrifice is a human not a divine institution.
In Chapters 30 - 31 Jeremiah preaches from the perspective of exile. In 31:31-34 he describes the new covenant that God will make with his people. God’s law will be written on people’s hearts. There is no more need for a Temple because the people will all know the Lord –will be in relationship with him. The tone has changed from threat to promise and redemption. God is on their side and has a plan – an image of a reconciled humanity. Matthew has Jesus using these words when he tells his disciples at the last supper that the cup is “my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (MT 26:28).
After the return from exile, and despite the witness of Jeremiah, the Temple was rebuilt more splendidly than before. It was gradually developed until, by the time of Jesus, it had become one of the wonders of the ancient world - its dome covered in goldleaf. It is estimated that over a million people made the pilgrimage there during the Passover – the Temple must have been awash with the blood of all of those animals. Its final destruction in 70 AD by the Romans (and foretold by Jesus) led to a huge crisis for the Jewish people, surmounted only by the Rabbinic written tradition, not depending on Temple. The deep need in people for violence and blood sacrifice is so strong that only a transformation of our hearts that goes deeper still can overturn it. This call to enter into a transformed humanity is what lies at the heart of the gospel and is the witness of the crucifixion.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Sacred Space #1
Here is the first study summary in our new series - Sacred Space in the Bible: From Temple Place to Trinity Space. For a different take on the material, check out Tony's blog "Not my Shallow Heart, but, yes, this Shadow Heart" (October 4th 2010).
-Linda
Sacred Space #1 Jacob’s encounters with God 10/01/10
Sacred space is the space in which God or the divine is experienced. But what exactly does that mean? The purpose of this and the following studies is to pursue that question. The stories in Genesis are filled with sacred spaces marked by altars and the blood of animal sacrifice. For example 12:6-8.
“Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the Oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord.”
Also 13:18 “So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the Lord.” Abraham is portrayed as moving through Canaan mapping out territory for the God of Israel. And the same is true of the other patriarchs; see 26:23-25 among others.
There are many important narratives associated with Abraham – to do with promises, the land and circumcision. In contrast the stories of Jacob have a more personal feel. They describe his character, his strivings as an individual, his trickery and the violence this provokes. With Jacob the concept of sacred space shifts from a place of awe and transcendence to something ultimately to do with relationship.
The story of Jacob’s ladder (Gen 28:10-22) is the first of two well-known narratives about Jacob encountering the divine. Jacob’s dream is quoted by Jesus in John1:51 when Jesus tells Nathaniel (an honest Israelite) that the Son of Man will be the new founding theophany for Israel: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”. For the evangelist John, it is the raising up of Jesus on the cross that reveals God’s glory. The ladder in the dream that bridges the gap between heaven and earth is replaced by the person of Christ crucified.
This story is twinned with a second story – one of the most intimate and fascinating in the Bible - is found in Gen 32:22-32. The context of this story is that Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright – his father’s blessing. Fearful of his brother’s anger, Jacob fled to Haran in the East to relatives of his mother’s brother Laban. There he stays for many years, marrying first Leah then Rachel, accumulating family, flocks and possessions. Eventually he decides to return to his homeland, but is fearful of the reception he will get from Esau. Gen 32:3-21 describes his attempts at allaying Esau’s wrath by sending presents of flocks, slaves and even his family ahead of him. Finally he is alone. It is at this point, in the night, that Jacob encounters a “man” who wrestles with him until dawn. Even though he is wounded (struck on his hip) Jacob does not yield and demands a blessing from his opponent. The man replies “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed” and Jacob names the place Peniel (meaning the “face of God”) - for he has seen God face to face and yet his life is preserved.
In this account of the struggle between Jacob and God at Peniel God is weak against Jacob, but leaves Jacob with both a wound and a blessing. This is a different picture of God from the prevailing image in the Torah in which God is usually understood in terms of power and threat.
In Genesis 33: 1-11 Jacob meets his brother. Esau does not exact revenge, instead runs to meet him, embraces him, falls on his neck, kisses him and weeps. Esau does not want to accept any of Jacob’s gifts but Jacob responds “If I find favor with you, then accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God”.
There is an implied critique of the violent image of God found in Deuteronomy and Exodus here. While Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and draws on ancient traditions, it reached its final form later than many of the books of the Old Testament. In the earlier Amos1:11; Jeremiah 25:21; 49:8-10 and book of Obadiah, Edom is depicted as a hated enemy of Israel. Esau is traditionally the ancestor of the Edomites (Gen 36:9). In 2 Samuel 8:13-14 David conquers Edom. In this context the attitude of Esau in Genesis is amazing. His attitude of forgiveness and brotherhood spurs his brother, who has so recently encountered God, to liken his face to that of God. This face is of a God who does not prevail against his enemies, but wounds them and blesses them through weakness.
These two stories – Jacob’s dream and his wrestling with God at Peniel- frame the story of the conflict between Esau and Jacob. The first portrays the more traditional image of a divide between heaven and earth, in which a ladder is needed for the divine to enter into the human space. The second signals that sacred space, the place we encounter God, is ultimately to do with relationship, surrender, weakness, blessing and forgiveness. In John’s gospel the Son of Man fulfills this second pathway to perfection, and so brings the ladder of the transcendent divine into the heart of human existence.
-Linda
Sacred Space #1 Jacob’s encounters with God 10/01/10
Sacred space is the space in which God or the divine is experienced. But what exactly does that mean? The purpose of this and the following studies is to pursue that question. The stories in Genesis are filled with sacred spaces marked by altars and the blood of animal sacrifice. For example 12:6-8.
“Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the Oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord.”
Also 13:18 “So Abram moved his tent, and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the Lord.” Abraham is portrayed as moving through Canaan mapping out territory for the God of Israel. And the same is true of the other patriarchs; see 26:23-25 among others.
There are many important narratives associated with Abraham – to do with promises, the land and circumcision. In contrast the stories of Jacob have a more personal feel. They describe his character, his strivings as an individual, his trickery and the violence this provokes. With Jacob the concept of sacred space shifts from a place of awe and transcendence to something ultimately to do with relationship.
The story of Jacob’s ladder (Gen 28:10-22) is the first of two well-known narratives about Jacob encountering the divine. Jacob’s dream is quoted by Jesus in John1:51 when Jesus tells Nathaniel (an honest Israelite) that the Son of Man will be the new founding theophany for Israel: “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”. For the evangelist John, it is the raising up of Jesus on the cross that reveals God’s glory. The ladder in the dream that bridges the gap between heaven and earth is replaced by the person of Christ crucified.
This story is twinned with a second story – one of the most intimate and fascinating in the Bible - is found in Gen 32:22-32. The context of this story is that Jacob tricked his brother Esau out of his birthright – his father’s blessing. Fearful of his brother’s anger, Jacob fled to Haran in the East to relatives of his mother’s brother Laban. There he stays for many years, marrying first Leah then Rachel, accumulating family, flocks and possessions. Eventually he decides to return to his homeland, but is fearful of the reception he will get from Esau. Gen 32:3-21 describes his attempts at allaying Esau’s wrath by sending presents of flocks, slaves and even his family ahead of him. Finally he is alone. It is at this point, in the night, that Jacob encounters a “man” who wrestles with him until dawn. Even though he is wounded (struck on his hip) Jacob does not yield and demands a blessing from his opponent. The man replies “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed” and Jacob names the place Peniel (meaning the “face of God”) - for he has seen God face to face and yet his life is preserved.
In this account of the struggle between Jacob and God at Peniel God is weak against Jacob, but leaves Jacob with both a wound and a blessing. This is a different picture of God from the prevailing image in the Torah in which God is usually understood in terms of power and threat.
In Genesis 33: 1-11 Jacob meets his brother. Esau does not exact revenge, instead runs to meet him, embraces him, falls on his neck, kisses him and weeps. Esau does not want to accept any of Jacob’s gifts but Jacob responds “If I find favor with you, then accept my present from my hand; for truly to see your face is like seeing the face of God”.
There is an implied critique of the violent image of God found in Deuteronomy and Exodus here. While Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and draws on ancient traditions, it reached its final form later than many of the books of the Old Testament. In the earlier Amos1:11; Jeremiah 25:21; 49:8-10 and book of Obadiah, Edom is depicted as a hated enemy of Israel. Esau is traditionally the ancestor of the Edomites (Gen 36:9). In 2 Samuel 8:13-14 David conquers Edom. In this context the attitude of Esau in Genesis is amazing. His attitude of forgiveness and brotherhood spurs his brother, who has so recently encountered God, to liken his face to that of God. This face is of a God who does not prevail against his enemies, but wounds them and blesses them through weakness.
These two stories – Jacob’s dream and his wrestling with God at Peniel- frame the story of the conflict between Esau and Jacob. The first portrays the more traditional image of a divide between heaven and earth, in which a ladder is needed for the divine to enter into the human space. The second signals that sacred space, the place we encounter God, is ultimately to do with relationship, surrender, weakness, blessing and forgiveness. In John’s gospel the Son of Man fulfills this second pathway to perfection, and so brings the ladder of the transcendent divine into the heart of human existence.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Deep Places
I’m sure it’s already a cliché of blogging and preaching—the Chilean miners rising from their tomb two thousand feet under a mountain—but who cares, it’s irresistible in a world dying for a breath of hope.
And more than this: it’s a page cut straight from the Christian culture of South America and of all those throughout the world who celebrate Easter. “Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life, that I should not go down to the Pit!” (Ps. 30:3) Who could deny that part of the thrill as each man came out of the beautiful escape capsule was its echoes of the Pascal Mystery? Because Christians say “Christ is Risen” the world had hoped that little bit more urgently, that little bit more fervently, that the thirty three miners would be saved.
But there is something even more important, more significant, than a brief media moment framed by the gospels. I used to teach a seminary student who was always talking about “thin spaces.” This person meant experiences where the normal mundane sense of the world was displaced by feelings of awe, beauty, holiness. Dead, harsh or oppressive elements of daily life were dispelled and something much more wonderful took their place.
I think, however, that “deep spaces” is a much better image. It is illustrated of course by the experience of the Chilean miners, but, beneath that, it is affirmed by the core New Testament trajectory of death, descent into the tomb and third day resurrection. John’s gospel breaks from the geometry of resurrection as an “up” movement: the passion and death of Jesus are in fact his “lifting up”. Then resurrection is simply the life-filled affirmation of that amazing, counter-intuitive “up”. And, afterward, when Jesus’ brothers and sisters learn the God-revealing meaning of all this Jesus does “ascend”, i.e. all spaces in the universe are filled with his amazing new geometry of descent.
Deep spaces are unmade space, space not controlled by the violent meanings of the world. They may be the result of violence—perhaps they always are—but those suffering in them/from them do not share the world’s meaning: rather they endure it and from the depths of their souls they cry out against it. Deep spaces are therefore the place of emptiness, of possibility, of what yet can be. They are the space of creation and re-creation.
Consequently they are the space of great love and joy. This last weekend I spent time in a monastery in southern New York. It was classic fall weather— that peculiar dry and bright intensity when all the colors of life crackle in chorus before they must turn to dust. The monastery is located high upon weathered mountains which shoulder up clouds then sweep down abruptly into carved-out stream and river valleys. There is a path at back of the monastery which leads down just such a canyon, down to the river Chemung five hundred feet below. Near the head of the path, on a wall by the last of the buildings, one of the brothers had placed a crucifix with the Christ made out of wrapped wire, like the coils of several electric motors strung together. There was something about the harshness of the medium and the way the artist made the corpus sunk entirely in death, with the knee jutting out almost at right angles. It captured the total imprisonment of the body and the fact that the only movement left for a crucified man was spiritual: either total hatred, total despair, or a total self-giving of love. Needless to say what the image captured was the last. Thus suddenly it was entirely right that the body should resemble electric coils, for it was this love that made the electrons run in the first place, across all the channels of the universe. And the crook of the knee projecting out into the void signaled the great wooded chasm below and it became filled with God’s love in a totally real and concrete sense.
This was not a thin space, suggesting a parallel, better and spiritual world. This was a deep space, the depths of this world changed and changing into what it was always meant to be. Deep spaces may not be easy. They can be filled with trauma and the imminent threat of death. But as shaped by the Crucified they are haunted endlessly by love and contain an indelible promise of life. I wasn’t thinking at all of Chile, just about the wooded canyon, about electricity, and about the mystery of love . It was only later I thought about the Chilean miners, and about all the TV stations and the Internet, their electricity buzzing with resurrection in the depths.
And more than this: it’s a page cut straight from the Christian culture of South America and of all those throughout the world who celebrate Easter. “Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life, that I should not go down to the Pit!” (Ps. 30:3) Who could deny that part of the thrill as each man came out of the beautiful escape capsule was its echoes of the Pascal Mystery? Because Christians say “Christ is Risen” the world had hoped that little bit more urgently, that little bit more fervently, that the thirty three miners would be saved.
But there is something even more important, more significant, than a brief media moment framed by the gospels. I used to teach a seminary student who was always talking about “thin spaces.” This person meant experiences where the normal mundane sense of the world was displaced by feelings of awe, beauty, holiness. Dead, harsh or oppressive elements of daily life were dispelled and something much more wonderful took their place.
I think, however, that “deep spaces” is a much better image. It is illustrated of course by the experience of the Chilean miners, but, beneath that, it is affirmed by the core New Testament trajectory of death, descent into the tomb and third day resurrection. John’s gospel breaks from the geometry of resurrection as an “up” movement: the passion and death of Jesus are in fact his “lifting up”. Then resurrection is simply the life-filled affirmation of that amazing, counter-intuitive “up”. And, afterward, when Jesus’ brothers and sisters learn the God-revealing meaning of all this Jesus does “ascend”, i.e. all spaces in the universe are filled with his amazing new geometry of descent.
Deep spaces are unmade space, space not controlled by the violent meanings of the world. They may be the result of violence—perhaps they always are—but those suffering in them/from them do not share the world’s meaning: rather they endure it and from the depths of their souls they cry out against it. Deep spaces are therefore the place of emptiness, of possibility, of what yet can be. They are the space of creation and re-creation.
Consequently they are the space of great love and joy. This last weekend I spent time in a monastery in southern New York. It was classic fall weather— that peculiar dry and bright intensity when all the colors of life crackle in chorus before they must turn to dust. The monastery is located high upon weathered mountains which shoulder up clouds then sweep down abruptly into carved-out stream and river valleys. There is a path at back of the monastery which leads down just such a canyon, down to the river Chemung five hundred feet below. Near the head of the path, on a wall by the last of the buildings, one of the brothers had placed a crucifix with the Christ made out of wrapped wire, like the coils of several electric motors strung together. There was something about the harshness of the medium and the way the artist made the corpus sunk entirely in death, with the knee jutting out almost at right angles. It captured the total imprisonment of the body and the fact that the only movement left for a crucified man was spiritual: either total hatred, total despair, or a total self-giving of love. Needless to say what the image captured was the last. Thus suddenly it was entirely right that the body should resemble electric coils, for it was this love that made the electrons run in the first place, across all the channels of the universe. And the crook of the knee projecting out into the void signaled the great wooded chasm below and it became filled with God’s love in a totally real and concrete sense.
This was not a thin space, suggesting a parallel, better and spiritual world. This was a deep space, the depths of this world changed and changing into what it was always meant to be. Deep spaces may not be easy. They can be filled with trauma and the imminent threat of death. But as shaped by the Crucified they are haunted endlessly by love and contain an indelible promise of life. I wasn’t thinking at all of Chile, just about the wooded canyon, about electricity, and about the mystery of love . It was only later I thought about the Chilean miners, and about all the TV stations and the Internet, their electricity buzzing with resurrection in the depths.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Not my Shallow Heart, but, Yes, this Shadow Heart.
I don’t normally comment on our bible studies, Linda does such a good job of writing them up and blogging them in their own right. But something struck me about last Friday’s study which made me want to sit down and trouble the keyboard, at least this one time.
At our first session on Sacred Space we did the story of Jacob’s nocturnal wrestling bout in Genesis (chaps. 32-33). The fight happened at a place which Jacob named Peniel meaning “the Face of God” which is explained by Jacob’s statement after the battle, “I have seen the face of God and lived.” There’s a lot of stuff going on but it’s clear the figure that Jacob wrestles is the figure of God in dramatic or story form. Jacob leaves no doubt about it and the fact is pivotal in the next story, the encounter with Esau, where Jacob says “seeing you is like seeing the face of God”. A key conclusion of the story then is that the fight at the very best is a draw for God, and given Jacob’s vastly outmatched ranking it could easily be counted as his win. In other words God loses against the human opponent. Or, God is nonviolent. (The issue of nonviolence is made certain by the doublet story of Esau— a man whose violence Jacob had provoked but who greets Jacob with love: even so seeing him is like “seeing the face of God”, i.e. the God who refuses violence).
A big lesson here.
For at the same time as God loses God wounds Jacob as a reminder of the fight. Jacob wins but he goes away limping. He has a permanent reminder in his body of God’s essential not-beating-him, of God’s nonviolence. And that’s what really wounds. It tells Jacob that no matter God’s power the greatness of God is God’s nonviolence, God’s refusal to win. The radical reading we gave is that it is God’s weakness that wounds and worries away at our obsessive human structure of violence.
Enter Jesus. There can be very little doubt that Jesus learnt from this story the character of his Father, the one who makes the sun to rise on the just and unjust alike. No perceptive reader can miss it. And then through the revelation of his total weakness on the cross Jesus makes the radical reading definitive. No doubt here about who loses the fight with human violence. Now it is the Jesus figure that worries and wrestles with humanity through its long night of guilt, anger, despair and retaliation. Jesus is the ultimate wrestler struggling in ever matchup, in every fighting cage, with all our historical violence.
Which brings me to the theological point of the reflection.
If this picture is true—if God in Jesus is wrestling with the depth of our humanity to change us—then many past theological constructions regarding grace, election, predestination are simply wrong-headed. The idea that God makes an unconditional decision in God’s mind regarding who shall get saved and get into heaven not only erases God’s nonviolent wrestling with us but it inverts it into a total smackdown every time—by God. This is what is called “high theology”, so high that it cannot see what’s on the ground, cannot see the actual human dynamic by which God wounds us with compassion and nonviolence. It may be the case that my own heart or humanity is continually violent—perverse as Jeremiah says—but the humanity, or the heart of Jesus, is in full human contact with me—wrestling so close I can hear it beat—and all I have to do is pay attention, stop fighting just for an instant (like a fighter who for an instant loses concentration), and he wounds me at once with his own nonviolent humanity or heart. This is not a matter of an arbitrary decision in God’s mind, but is a concrete effect of Jesus’ nonviolent humanity directly on me, the impact of a new human structuring breaking into the old.
There is no way of tracking exactly when and where I may get wounded by Jesus’ nonviolence, when and where this alternative structuring will reconfigure my violent structure; but what we do know is this is an entirely human process. It is an unfathomable mixture of historical and cultural situation, of family background, even of neural biology, but it is certain none of it is predetermined. As Jesus says it is as untraceable as the wind, but that is exactly what makes it human. It is the chaotic mix of factors that allows for that slightest atom of freedom, for that moment when the new humanity stands in balance against the old and I am able in that moment to surrender myself to this new way. When the new enters in to the old with a clarity that has so far been missing I am so to speak equally in both worlds—I am in the future, and I am in the past. At that point I am called to add the feather weight of my will to the situation. In fact it is precisely the miracle of the new which creates the mystery of freedom: it allows me an unparalleled moment of possibility between two ways of being me; there are in fact two “me’s” in existence at that moment and I simply have to let myself fall into one or the other.
The truth is I have a shallow violent heart, but in the depth of my night there is another heart in contact with me, and with all humanity. This is our shadow heart, the one first encountered by Jacob, and then through Jesus by everyone. There is a shadow heart beating for all humanity, for the whole earth. It is the physical rhythm of a new creation.
Oct. 4, Feast of St. Francis
At our first session on Sacred Space we did the story of Jacob’s nocturnal wrestling bout in Genesis (chaps. 32-33). The fight happened at a place which Jacob named Peniel meaning “the Face of God” which is explained by Jacob’s statement after the battle, “I have seen the face of God and lived.” There’s a lot of stuff going on but it’s clear the figure that Jacob wrestles is the figure of God in dramatic or story form. Jacob leaves no doubt about it and the fact is pivotal in the next story, the encounter with Esau, where Jacob says “seeing you is like seeing the face of God”. A key conclusion of the story then is that the fight at the very best is a draw for God, and given Jacob’s vastly outmatched ranking it could easily be counted as his win. In other words God loses against the human opponent. Or, God is nonviolent. (The issue of nonviolence is made certain by the doublet story of Esau— a man whose violence Jacob had provoked but who greets Jacob with love: even so seeing him is like “seeing the face of God”, i.e. the God who refuses violence).
A big lesson here.
For at the same time as God loses God wounds Jacob as a reminder of the fight. Jacob wins but he goes away limping. He has a permanent reminder in his body of God’s essential not-beating-him, of God’s nonviolence. And that’s what really wounds. It tells Jacob that no matter God’s power the greatness of God is God’s nonviolence, God’s refusal to win. The radical reading we gave is that it is God’s weakness that wounds and worries away at our obsessive human structure of violence.
Enter Jesus. There can be very little doubt that Jesus learnt from this story the character of his Father, the one who makes the sun to rise on the just and unjust alike. No perceptive reader can miss it. And then through the revelation of his total weakness on the cross Jesus makes the radical reading definitive. No doubt here about who loses the fight with human violence. Now it is the Jesus figure that worries and wrestles with humanity through its long night of guilt, anger, despair and retaliation. Jesus is the ultimate wrestler struggling in ever matchup, in every fighting cage, with all our historical violence.
Which brings me to the theological point of the reflection.
If this picture is true—if God in Jesus is wrestling with the depth of our humanity to change us—then many past theological constructions regarding grace, election, predestination are simply wrong-headed. The idea that God makes an unconditional decision in God’s mind regarding who shall get saved and get into heaven not only erases God’s nonviolent wrestling with us but it inverts it into a total smackdown every time—by God. This is what is called “high theology”, so high that it cannot see what’s on the ground, cannot see the actual human dynamic by which God wounds us with compassion and nonviolence. It may be the case that my own heart or humanity is continually violent—perverse as Jeremiah says—but the humanity, or the heart of Jesus, is in full human contact with me—wrestling so close I can hear it beat—and all I have to do is pay attention, stop fighting just for an instant (like a fighter who for an instant loses concentration), and he wounds me at once with his own nonviolent humanity or heart. This is not a matter of an arbitrary decision in God’s mind, but is a concrete effect of Jesus’ nonviolent humanity directly on me, the impact of a new human structuring breaking into the old.
There is no way of tracking exactly when and where I may get wounded by Jesus’ nonviolence, when and where this alternative structuring will reconfigure my violent structure; but what we do know is this is an entirely human process. It is an unfathomable mixture of historical and cultural situation, of family background, even of neural biology, but it is certain none of it is predetermined. As Jesus says it is as untraceable as the wind, but that is exactly what makes it human. It is the chaotic mix of factors that allows for that slightest atom of freedom, for that moment when the new humanity stands in balance against the old and I am able in that moment to surrender myself to this new way. When the new enters in to the old with a clarity that has so far been missing I am so to speak equally in both worlds—I am in the future, and I am in the past. At that point I am called to add the feather weight of my will to the situation. In fact it is precisely the miracle of the new which creates the mystery of freedom: it allows me an unparalleled moment of possibility between two ways of being me; there are in fact two “me’s” in existence at that moment and I simply have to let myself fall into one or the other.
The truth is I have a shallow violent heart, but in the depth of my night there is another heart in contact with me, and with all humanity. This is our shadow heart, the one first encountered by Jacob, and then through Jesus by everyone. There is a shadow heart beating for all humanity, for the whole earth. It is the physical rhythm of a new creation.
Oct. 4, Feast of St. Francis
Saturday, September 25, 2010
A Better Book
I have just read Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity and I have to say honestly, as an author, it’s a better book than mine, i.e. the one that's coming out shortly (see Homepage). But having said that I immediately want to take it back, and I will!
So let me comment this way. Brian has written a truly remarkable book, one that Christians will be reading for many years to come. I won’t say it will have the legs of Augustine’s City of God which has lasted one and a half millennia (if only because the world we have at the moment doesn’t have those kind of legs: who are we kidding!) However, despite its decisively “keep it simple” approach assisted by a felicitous style (even the occasional big words seem to land lightly on the page like cottonwood blossom) it has the same breadth and strength of vision, the same epoch-forming glance and assurance, as Augustine’s magisterial synthesis.
Did I just say that? I did. And I think it’s true. Augustine wrote at a pivotal moment after the barbarians had taken Rome and the total collapse of the Roman empire was looming on the horizon. Augustine turned the imperial disaster of Rome into the metaphysical triumph of the church and so ushered in the character of the Middle Ages when a spiritual organization claimed “eternal” meaning and sovereignty over all worldly powers. Brian is now making a parallel but inverse move. In a moment when the “Christian West” is behaving just like imperial Rome—in the book he points out that the demographic group most likely to support torture is white Evangelical Christians—and can also seem on the point of economic and social collapse, he shows instead that the Bible nourishes a story of human historical transformation through service, nonviolence and love. Biblical faith does not point us beyond history but is “a guiding star within it…an unquenchable dream that inspires us to unceasing constructive action” (p. 62).
It is the conclusive shift in the Christian story-line carried through within our contemporary crisis that makes this book brilliant. Alaric and his marauding Goths were at the gates of Rome when Augustine penned a book for the ages. Today we have a global society, and all its billions of human issues are constantly at our gates because of the Internet and T.V. An exceptionally new situation requiring an exceptionally new theological paradigm, and Brian has served us a very plausible candidate. But it does lack something and that’s why I want to take back my initial act of deference!
My book, available through this website shortly (and later for trade release), does not have Brian’s ambitious catechetical scope nor his fine-wine-and-good-conversation tone but it is very much in the same game—shifting the Christian viewpoint and praxis to the historical and the this-earthly. But then what Virtually Christian has that A New Kind of Christianity lacks is an account of how it is the gospel of Jesus that got us all into this situation in the first place. It’s not that somehow we have just now woken up to the authentic core narrative of the Bible. That narrative has of its own inherent vigor been shaping our human context and awareness. Its exposure of all human violence as in fact violence and its simultaneous offer of compassion and forgiveness as the true mode of human existence have of their own power overturned the Augustinian synthesis (the viewpoint which in his book Brian calls the Greco-Roman narrative). In this light the Evangelical in Brian needs perhaps to go one step further. By grace we are saved! And this grace is neither purely personal, not is it passive, waiting for us to discover it intellectually in books. It is active and pro-active, producing a cultural human situation in which we can recognize it for itself. Like a caterpillar spinning its own chrysalis--and us within it--the gospel changes the human cultural world so finally the butterfly can emerge!
This makes “a new kind of Christianity” even more urgent. Augustine shaped a whole Christian era using elements of Greek philosophy and Roman realpolitik that were not the gospel. Now, in these latter days, the gospel is shaping its own era by facing us with the truth of human violence and crying out in the world for a new human way. A New Kind of Christianity and Virtually Christian are both in their way writing about a shift the gospel alone has written, and first.
So let me comment this way. Brian has written a truly remarkable book, one that Christians will be reading for many years to come. I won’t say it will have the legs of Augustine’s City of God which has lasted one and a half millennia (if only because the world we have at the moment doesn’t have those kind of legs: who are we kidding!) However, despite its decisively “keep it simple” approach assisted by a felicitous style (even the occasional big words seem to land lightly on the page like cottonwood blossom) it has the same breadth and strength of vision, the same epoch-forming glance and assurance, as Augustine’s magisterial synthesis.
Did I just say that? I did. And I think it’s true. Augustine wrote at a pivotal moment after the barbarians had taken Rome and the total collapse of the Roman empire was looming on the horizon. Augustine turned the imperial disaster of Rome into the metaphysical triumph of the church and so ushered in the character of the Middle Ages when a spiritual organization claimed “eternal” meaning and sovereignty over all worldly powers. Brian is now making a parallel but inverse move. In a moment when the “Christian West” is behaving just like imperial Rome—in the book he points out that the demographic group most likely to support torture is white Evangelical Christians—and can also seem on the point of economic and social collapse, he shows instead that the Bible nourishes a story of human historical transformation through service, nonviolence and love. Biblical faith does not point us beyond history but is “a guiding star within it…an unquenchable dream that inspires us to unceasing constructive action” (p. 62).
It is the conclusive shift in the Christian story-line carried through within our contemporary crisis that makes this book brilliant. Alaric and his marauding Goths were at the gates of Rome when Augustine penned a book for the ages. Today we have a global society, and all its billions of human issues are constantly at our gates because of the Internet and T.V. An exceptionally new situation requiring an exceptionally new theological paradigm, and Brian has served us a very plausible candidate. But it does lack something and that’s why I want to take back my initial act of deference!
My book, available through this website shortly (and later for trade release), does not have Brian’s ambitious catechetical scope nor his fine-wine-and-good-conversation tone but it is very much in the same game—shifting the Christian viewpoint and praxis to the historical and the this-earthly. But then what Virtually Christian has that A New Kind of Christianity lacks is an account of how it is the gospel of Jesus that got us all into this situation in the first place. It’s not that somehow we have just now woken up to the authentic core narrative of the Bible. That narrative has of its own inherent vigor been shaping our human context and awareness. Its exposure of all human violence as in fact violence and its simultaneous offer of compassion and forgiveness as the true mode of human existence have of their own power overturned the Augustinian synthesis (the viewpoint which in his book Brian calls the Greco-Roman narrative). In this light the Evangelical in Brian needs perhaps to go one step further. By grace we are saved! And this grace is neither purely personal, not is it passive, waiting for us to discover it intellectually in books. It is active and pro-active, producing a cultural human situation in which we can recognize it for itself. Like a caterpillar spinning its own chrysalis--and us within it--the gospel changes the human cultural world so finally the butterfly can emerge!
This makes “a new kind of Christianity” even more urgent. Augustine shaped a whole Christian era using elements of Greek philosophy and Roman realpolitik that were not the gospel. Now, in these latter days, the gospel is shaping its own era by facing us with the truth of human violence and crying out in the world for a new human way. A New Kind of Christianity and Virtually Christian are both in their way writing about a shift the gospel alone has written, and first.
Friday, September 10, 2010
The American
After “America!” right on cue The American, a media-inspired (or simply inspired) segue from the last blog. It’s a movie, a new release, which I just saw. Sumptuously shot in the high valleys of Abruzzo, a mountainous region in central Italy, it fits a familiar genre: the spy or assassin who wants in from the cold, wants to live an ordinary decent life with the newfound love of his life. Except this time the assassin is pretty clearly the eponymous paradigm for all of us, for Americans as such. It’s only because it is presented by the ever likeable George Clooney that audiences will be prepared to watch this unpalatable parable. For that it is, a parable, complete with priest, prostitutes and pointed theological dialogue.
Clooney plays Jack, the soulless assassin seeking to find his soul. In his hideout in the picturesque mountain town—in one shot we’re shown it from the sky, along with soaring eagle (geddit? the American eagle/satellite intelligence?)--he is befriended by a white-haired avuncular priest. Jack’s cover story is that he’s a photographer taking landscape photos for magazines and travel books. The priest asks him if he knows anything of “our history” and Jack replies “No”. The priest says “You're American. You think you can escape history." Later on the priest says to Jack, "You cannot doubt the existence of Hell; you live in it."
The movie is something like the experience of going to confession. The priest bugs Jack to do exactly that and the episode points up the whole screenplay. Everything has the chastened atmosphere of a visit to the sin bin, a feeling fraught with perdition. It does not exclude plenty of sexual action as Jack visits prostitutes and falls in love with one of them named Clara (of course, Francis’ love, the woman of peace). But this only serves to up the ante—the sex seems to be balancing on the edge of a bottomless precipice and makes Jack’s distance from real life that much greater. It’s as if Clooney (he’s also a producer) and the director, Anton Corbijn, are bringing us on a penitential pilgrimage to a medieval Italian hilltop shrine in order to confront us with our very 21st century American crisis.
For apart from the perennial of sex the sins are decisively modern. Jack’s secret skill is the construction of weapons and we are treated to a long wordless sequence in which he painstakingly machine tools parts and bullets for a high-power rifle. When he makes delivery of the weapon to his contact he gives her a tin full of specially made explosive bullets and says “Some candy for you.” Jack’s sins are those of relentless contemporary violence conducted by anonymous assassins, predator drones, insidious technology packaged like candy. In the first minute of the movie we see Jack shoot a completely innocent bystander (someone he’s also just had sex with) because she was about to discover his identity.
So if all this is confession where is the repentance? It comes in the climactic moment of the movie and is produced not by a change in Jack as such (he goes off to shoot someone else) but by the convergence of images and emotions the movie itself produces. It is cinematic repentance and at its root is what I would call a “cinechristocentrism”. This happens when the only image that can bring resolution to the impossible violence put up on screen is Christ. I analyze this in my book that’s coming out (Virtually Christian—see Home Page) and there I describe it as the continual rising up of the image of Christ’s compassion from the vortex of violent images around us, the one truly differentiating sign. There I give several movie examples and The American provides yet one more. The big scene happens in the context of an annual religious procession presided over by the priest. In the midst of the ritual there is an attempted assassination and a body falls off a roof and lies dying on one of the photogenic stone alleyways of the town. Jack rushes off to get information from the dying shooter and is followed in short order by the priest accompanied by a troop of acolytes. In effect the procession instead of following the plaster statue of the Virgin becomes one following after Jack and the actual event of violence. In just one more of an ever-growing list of epochal images from contemporary cinema we have the ceremonial crucifix carried by an altar boy, tilted at a crazy angle behind the priest and his holy band, and yet somehow guiding the revelatory moment. We know the image of the cross is absolutely deliberate because it has been signaled earlier when Jack, invited by the priest to dinner, casually picked up a crucifix from his desk. Now turning from the dying body Jack says the words for which the whole movie has been dying, “I’m sorry.” The cross at its tilted angle appears destabilized as a religious icon, but actually it is we who are destabilized and the cross is correct: as the human truth of violence it is the cross that is bringing us into a radical new geometry. It bends to the body on the ground and thus reveals from below the godless facticity of violence invited to become god-filled forgiveness and love.
This is “cinechristocentrism”, the truth of Christ showing up in the place where all our most intense images relentlessly concentrate. Just as violence concentrates on our movie screens so inevitably does Jesus. It means that well apart from religion and doctrine Christ is sensed “artistically” as the only principle that can deal with American violence. And this in a situation where the dominant political and religious discourse is blind and deaf and dumb to the structural challenge of Christ to our way of violence. But cinema is quintessentially “American” and even though the churches still don’t “get it” the cinematic soul of America does. Or, more accurately, America’s order of signified meaning, which is its constant swirl of images, is challenged from within because of the forgiving and living Christ--that which set it in motion in the first place. The absolute self of America is being invited in crisis to become the self that says “I’m sorry”.
Clooney plays Jack, the soulless assassin seeking to find his soul. In his hideout in the picturesque mountain town—in one shot we’re shown it from the sky, along with soaring eagle (geddit? the American eagle/satellite intelligence?)--he is befriended by a white-haired avuncular priest. Jack’s cover story is that he’s a photographer taking landscape photos for magazines and travel books. The priest asks him if he knows anything of “our history” and Jack replies “No”. The priest says “You're American. You think you can escape history." Later on the priest says to Jack, "You cannot doubt the existence of Hell; you live in it."
The movie is something like the experience of going to confession. The priest bugs Jack to do exactly that and the episode points up the whole screenplay. Everything has the chastened atmosphere of a visit to the sin bin, a feeling fraught with perdition. It does not exclude plenty of sexual action as Jack visits prostitutes and falls in love with one of them named Clara (of course, Francis’ love, the woman of peace). But this only serves to up the ante—the sex seems to be balancing on the edge of a bottomless precipice and makes Jack’s distance from real life that much greater. It’s as if Clooney (he’s also a producer) and the director, Anton Corbijn, are bringing us on a penitential pilgrimage to a medieval Italian hilltop shrine in order to confront us with our very 21st century American crisis.
For apart from the perennial of sex the sins are decisively modern. Jack’s secret skill is the construction of weapons and we are treated to a long wordless sequence in which he painstakingly machine tools parts and bullets for a high-power rifle. When he makes delivery of the weapon to his contact he gives her a tin full of specially made explosive bullets and says “Some candy for you.” Jack’s sins are those of relentless contemporary violence conducted by anonymous assassins, predator drones, insidious technology packaged like candy. In the first minute of the movie we see Jack shoot a completely innocent bystander (someone he’s also just had sex with) because she was about to discover his identity.
So if all this is confession where is the repentance? It comes in the climactic moment of the movie and is produced not by a change in Jack as such (he goes off to shoot someone else) but by the convergence of images and emotions the movie itself produces. It is cinematic repentance and at its root is what I would call a “cinechristocentrism”. This happens when the only image that can bring resolution to the impossible violence put up on screen is Christ. I analyze this in my book that’s coming out (Virtually Christian—see Home Page) and there I describe it as the continual rising up of the image of Christ’s compassion from the vortex of violent images around us, the one truly differentiating sign. There I give several movie examples and The American provides yet one more. The big scene happens in the context of an annual religious procession presided over by the priest. In the midst of the ritual there is an attempted assassination and a body falls off a roof and lies dying on one of the photogenic stone alleyways of the town. Jack rushes off to get information from the dying shooter and is followed in short order by the priest accompanied by a troop of acolytes. In effect the procession instead of following the plaster statue of the Virgin becomes one following after Jack and the actual event of violence. In just one more of an ever-growing list of epochal images from contemporary cinema we have the ceremonial crucifix carried by an altar boy, tilted at a crazy angle behind the priest and his holy band, and yet somehow guiding the revelatory moment. We know the image of the cross is absolutely deliberate because it has been signaled earlier when Jack, invited by the priest to dinner, casually picked up a crucifix from his desk. Now turning from the dying body Jack says the words for which the whole movie has been dying, “I’m sorry.” The cross at its tilted angle appears destabilized as a religious icon, but actually it is we who are destabilized and the cross is correct: as the human truth of violence it is the cross that is bringing us into a radical new geometry. It bends to the body on the ground and thus reveals from below the godless facticity of violence invited to become god-filled forgiveness and love.
This is “cinechristocentrism”, the truth of Christ showing up in the place where all our most intense images relentlessly concentrate. Just as violence concentrates on our movie screens so inevitably does Jesus. It means that well apart from religion and doctrine Christ is sensed “artistically” as the only principle that can deal with American violence. And this in a situation where the dominant political and religious discourse is blind and deaf and dumb to the structural challenge of Christ to our way of violence. But cinema is quintessentially “American” and even though the churches still don’t “get it” the cinematic soul of America does. Or, more accurately, America’s order of signified meaning, which is its constant swirl of images, is challenged from within because of the forgiving and living Christ--that which set it in motion in the first place. The absolute self of America is being invited in crisis to become the self that says “I’m sorry”.
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