The Nightmare of Empire

Our church has been studying the last half of Genesis. My morning reading with Encounter with God this week landed in the same chapters. The title for yesterday morning's notes was ominously titled The Temptations of Empire:

As the famine continues and extends its reach across the whole region, Joseph achieves the pinnacle of his power in Egypt. He devised a system which kept mass starvation at bay, and the writer records that “he brought them through that year with food”. However, this success came at the price of the liberty of the people who were “reduced… to servitude”. The devising of an economic system which kept the population alive was a great achievement, but it resulted in a dangerous centralizing of power which, as the story of Exodus will reveal, led to oppression and slavery. 

Walter Brueggamann makes this point in a sermon called "The Fourth-Generation Sell-out." He asks why, given four sets of ancestral stories in Genesis (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph), God is spoken of repeatedly in reference to only three: “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." 

Why wouldn't Joseph, most powerful of the four, be included?

According to Brueggemann, Joseph’s name was dropped because he conducted the imperial work of Pharaoh. Given opportunity to be a blessing to the nations he became instead an agent of empire:  

Joseph proceeds to do more than interpret. He advises. He is a "consultant." . . . Joseph achieves for Pharaoh, by his rapacious, ruthless wisdom, a monopoly of food that becomes for Pharaoh an economic tool and a political weapon." Joseph victimized the Egyptians and eventually his own people as well.

 According to Brueggemann, "he becomes the manager and chaplain of the nightmare of empire." 

We are in a nightmare of empire of our own.

Our democracy, our country, our state, our political parties are all in upheaval: all held captive by powerful men who have compromised with evil and used privilege to harm those they promised to protect.

I believe many of our leaders start out, like Joseph, determined to serve well, then fall prey to temptation.

Surrounded by privilege and power, it's so tragically easy for them to lose their way.

I met one state representative who never stays in Harrisburg because, he says, "It's too easy to be sucked in. To think it's normal to be wined and dined by lobbyists. To think it's okay to use power to maintain my own position."

I've spoken with legislators who were genuinely thankful when they lost a race for re-election: "I'm not sure I realized how dysfunctional it was until I was forced to step away."

The people of Joseph's day had no choice about who ruled them. 

They had no say in the way the drama played out. 

Struggling to survive, they acquiesced to Pharaoh’s power and Joseph's ruthless greed.

We do have a choice.

And the moral responsibility to watch, pray, learn, speak, vote.

Our choices impact not just us but those who have far less choice: children in impoverished communities, men and women incarcerated without fair trial or reasonable bail, refugees fleeing oppressive regimes, people in nations across the globe who watch with alarm as our country careens toward war with Korea or capriciously withdraws from carefully drafted attempts to manage pressing concerns.

On a global scale, our voices are loud.

Our choices matter.

Even off-year elections matter. 

They determine what kinds of policies will move forward, what tone will govern party platforms, what kinds of leaders will be encouraged on their way.

And conversations matter.

What we repeat. Who we applaud. What we hope for. How we pray.

I pray for leaders who demonstrate humility, wisdom, courage.

I pray for Christians able to hear, discern and speak the truth.

I pray we remember the command to love our neighbor and the promise that perfect love casts out fear. 

I pray for a platform of justice and mercy, a church that remembers God's heart for the poor, the defenseless, the stranger, the worker. 

We bid you, stir up those who can change things;
do your stirring in the jaded halls of government;
do your stirring in the cynical offices of the corporations;
do your stirring amid the voting public too anxious to care;
do your stirring in the church that thinks too much about purity and not enough about wages.

Move, as you moved in ancient Egyptian days.
Move the waters and the flocks and the herds
toward new statutes and regulations,
new equity and good health care,
new dignity that cannot be given on the cheap.

  (From Walter Brueggemann: A Prayer of Protest, 2010)  

Some earlier posts about political issues can be found here: What's Your Platform

Several that consider Walter Brueggemann's discussion of scripture and kingdom:

Anxious in America, February 19, 2011

An Alternative Narrative, February 10, 2013 

And one on voting: 

Who Is Allowed to Vote? September 21, 2014

Lent Two: Eluding Privilege

When we’re considering what to give up for Lent, privilege is rarely on the list of options.

William Brassey Hole, Forty Days in the Wilderness,
England, 1906

Yet Jesus’ second temptation shows him sidestepping an invitation to demonstrate his privilege as the Son of God: 

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. 6 “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written:“‘He will command his angels concerning you,    and they will lift you up in their hands,    so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”Matthew 4:5-7 

There are moments in the gospel narratives when it seems the Pharisees would happily have welcomed Jesus into their leadership club if he’d only agreed to share their privilege, endorsing theirs with his own. But he insisted on eating with sinners, talking to women, honoring Samaritans, touching unclean lepers. From his days in the desert to his death on the cross, he deftly eluded any privilege thrust his way, weaving his way toward the margins until he finally hung outside the city, taunted and reviled by those who passed by.

This eluding of privilege was no accident. Paul tells us in Philippians:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,  but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

A few sentences later, Paul describes his own task of eluding privilege in his quest to know and be like Christ:

If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law,a Pharisee; as to zeal,a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under th law,blameless;But whatever gain I had,;I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.  Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.

Part of the goal of Lent is repentance and sacrifice, but part is the pursuit of deeper knowledge and joy. Paul understood that it was impossible to fully know Christ while holding on to privilege, and he was articulate and self-aware about the forms of privilege he could claim: religious birthright, exceptional ducation, endorsed experience, sanctioned racial identity.

He chose to count it all as loss.  “worthless,” in some translations. “Liabilities,” in another.

The Academy Awards last week stirred ongoing conversations about white and male privilege: all of the actors nominated were white; all the directors and screenwriters were male. In the fallout, the International Business Times reported that “the Oscar winners are voted on by members of the academy, and there are 6,028 voting members; 94 percent of them are white, 77 percent are men and 86 percent are over the age of 50.”

I’m not that interested in the Oscars, and no, I didn't watch them.

But I am interested in whose voices are heard, whose stories are told, and whose voices are excluded.

I’m also interested in the way privilege -acknowledged or not - becomes a liability and snare.

For years I attended the National Youth Worker Convention and grieved at how rarely there was an opportunity to hear from women, or non-white males. I watched with dismay as male youth leaders left the room at the start of the one set by a female band, and I listened to the disrespectful side conversations during the one female plenary speaker of an entire weekend. Apparently, I’m not the only one to feel concern: an online exchange about lack of diversity at one Christian convention prompted religion correspondent Jonathan Merritt to do a simple count: he found 19% female representation (20% at the National Youth Workers Convention, that’s an improvement, but not an impressive one), and 13% minority speaker representation. Minority female? Not sure – but from what I’ve seen, 1% might be overly optimistic.

This is not so much a political issue to me as a spiritual issue.

Read scripture, or church history, and the evidence is clear: it’s hard to hear God, or to represent him well, from a position of privilege and advantage.

Prophets, reformers, monks, desert fathers and mothers: their lives all suggest that the first step to listening well is breaking free from the voices of flattery, status quo, self-promotion, rationalization.

I started this week praying to see my own privilege more clearly, and looking for ways to set that privilege aside.

I’m not sure it can be done without completely breaking free from the systems and structures that hold privilege in place.

But I have some ideas about where to start.

Back in Philippians 2, Paul says 

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion,  then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

We can't look to the interests of others when we've never taken time to learn what those interests are.

We show our value of others first by learning to hear what they have to say.

But look more closely at the example of Jesus in his encounter with the Samaritan woman by the well:

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman, 12th Century
 Tbilisi, Georgia

We all know how low this woman was in the social and religious hierarchy. She's a woman. That's low.

She's a Samaritan. That's lower still.

She's been married five times. Still lower.

She is currently living, in an unmarried state, with another man. Lower.

If the Samaritan woman isn't at the absolute bottom, she's got it pretty well in sight.

But here's the amazing thing. Jesus finds a way to place himself lower, to lift her up to the superior position.

"Will you give me a drink?"

Jesus doesn't come to her with answers or gifts or power or miracles or a sermon or a program or an invitation to come to church.

Jesus approaches this woman and simply asks for help.

He asks her for help. And it blows her heart wide open. 

When we start from a place of privilege, we assume we have the answers.

But we've never even taken time to understand the questions.

Our wisdom is one-sided, and our good news one-dimensional, until we find a way to elude the privilege that blinds and binds us.

Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

For all false judgments, for uncharitable thoughts toward our neighbors, and for our prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.

 This is the third in a Lenten series.

Other Lenten posts:

2015:
    Ash Wednesday: Confession Booth, February 15

    Lent One: Embracing Hunger: February 24

From 2013:

    An  Alternative Narrative: February 10

    Seeking Blessing in a Fracture Land: February 17

    The Poor in Spirit and Those Who Mourn: February 24

    Hungering Far Past "Rightness": March 3

    Guns, God, Mercy: March 10

    Making Peace: What God's Children Do:  March 24

    Where is Newness Needed? March 31

From 2012:
     Looking toward Lent
     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham
     Lenten Silence: Charash, Be Still
     Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb
     Lenten Submission: Rethinking Hupotassō     

     Lenten Song: Remembering Ranan   

Lent One: Embracing Hunger

My childhood faith tradition was dismissive of Lent and its practices. Why would God care if we gave up chocolate? Or fasted on certain days?

chocolate: André Karwath aka Aka 

When God led our family into a more liturgical congregation, we discovered the value of spiritual disciplines and the joy of a liturgical calendar. Lent is an essential part of both.

Lent offers a time to pause and review, to consider what we’ve been feeding ourselves, to examine the values that hold us most tightly.

Food seems like a small part of that, yet giving up even something as simple as chocolate can become a daily reminder.

For years I’ve given up sugar during Lent. That necessitates giving up chocolate, sweet desserts, sodas, even coffee. It forces me to read labels, rethink menus, and acknowledge, yet again, that for me “sweet” too often equates to nurture.

Giving up sugar, chocolate, Facebook, whatever the choice, is a good way to peel ourselves free from unhealthy patterns, and a way to remind ourselves that it’s okay to want and not have. We won’t die if we don’t feed every desire. In fact, deprivation of harmful desires is an essential first step toward health.

This year, though, I’m not giving up sugar.

I’m reaching toward something deeper, though still a bit unclear.

Lent points us back toward Jesus in the desert, in his forty days of fasting and prayer.

Temptation of Christ in the Desert, 12th Century France

And I’ve been praying about that first temptation: 

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’  (Matthew 4:1-4). 

Set that beside Jesus’ statement, just days later: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:6.

What does it mean to live by more than bread alone?

How do I live in a way that is nourished more deeply by the daily word of God?

And here’s the question that’s been troubling me: what am I most hungry for?

Last week I wrote about confession, and shared the Ash Wednesday prayer from the Book of Common Prayer.

I’ve been pausing on the first section of that prayer, and puzzling over the realities of my own daily life:    

We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,
We confess to you, Lord.

 Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work,
We confess to you, Lord. 

I reread some of that and think “Well, no, I’m not really that self-indulgent.”

Or “my love of goods and comforts is not nearly as intemperate as some people I could name.”

But that’s not the point.

In fact, to even begin that conversation suggests an inordinate hunger: for self-justification? Self-righteous vindication?

It occurs to me that our hunger, almost by definition, is focused on self: looking good to ourselves or others, feeling fed, nourished, comfortable, safe.

It’s all about us.  

And how could we help it, in a culture that tells us from morning to night that we’re worth it, that our every wish deserves to be met, that we should never have to wait for service, never take second-best, never sacrifice our own demands? Even our churches (some, not all) allow us to imagine that it’s all about us: music we like, sermons that “feed” us, God’s blessing for us and only us.

Even salvation: is salvation about a happy future for ourselves, or a healed and whole creation for us all? 

Is it all about me?

What do I really hunger for?

And what Lenten abstinence will free or satisfy?

I wrote two years ago about “hungering far past rightness": 

"Righteousness," to me, was a competitive activity, with a strong punitive edge.

 Who would hunger and thirst after that? And what would it mean to be satisfied?

Dig a bit, and it turns out the original Greek word used in Matthew’s gospel, “dikaios,” is the same as the Hebrew word "tzedakah", a word used throughout the Old Testament to describe the character of God and God’s restorative actions: justice, truth, compassion, kindness, making right, renewing, restoring, ensuring good things for those without, restraining the powerful, lifting up the weak, repairing ruined vineyards and fields, ensuring wise governance and an equitable economy.

We have no word that comes even close. 

As part of that post I attempted a paraphrase of Matthew 5:6-7 

 Your greatest joy, benefit, health, will come from trusting God’s plan, and doing your best to live it, without insisting on your own rights, your own needs, your own safety.

And your greatest joy, benefit, health will come not from simply wanting God’s plan in your own life, but longing to see it revealed in the world around you, in the health of creation, provision for the poor, restoration for those mistreated. As you long to see God’s goodness revealed, you will, in fact, have that longing fulfilled. 

Reading back over those words, I can see I missed some important elements, highlighted in commentaries that explicate this passage:

Hungry Children, Creative Commons Cate Turton
 Department for International Development

First, hunger: my knowledge of hunger is sadly lacking. I’ve never been in a situation where my very life is threatened by lack of food. I’ve skipped meals, even on occasion fasted for days, but there’s always been food nearby. The word “hunger,” as used by Jesus, would have meant something much deeper than I fully understand: a desperate longing. A craving that consumes all attention and directs every ounce of energy.  An overwhelming neediness waiting, and watching, for food.

Second: righteousness. There’s something going on in the forms of Jesus’ words that suggests an outcome both specific and complete, both immediate and in the future: “the whole object, and not a part of it”, “now in part, fully hereafter.”

The more I hunger for righteousness, the more I see the brokenness around me and realize that our brokenness is all part of the same shattered wholeness.

And the more I pray to see the world as God sees it, the more overwhelmed I am by the need, yet amazed at the glimpses of grace and great mercy. 

Puzzling over commentary highlights, I came across this:

St. Austin, wondering at the overflowing measure of God's Spirit in the Apostles' hearts, observes that the reason why they were so full of God was because they were so empty of his creatures. 'They were very full,' he says, 'because they were very empty'" (Anon., in Ford). 

Here is a mystery worth pursuing: how do we become so empty of ourselves that God’s fullness overflows?

And how do we grow past a superficial hunger to a craving for justice and righteousness so deep it reshapes our spending, reframes our conversation, redirects our every ounce of energy? My first task this Lent is to prayerfully track down the superficial hungers that distract me from the one great hunger: TV shows that have crept onto my schedule, trivial pursuits that have squeezed out better things, good things worth doing that have kept me from the best.

And then, the bigger, harder task: embrace the hunger that will never be fully satisfied, but that opens our eyes and hearts to the world's great need and daily draws us closer to the one who made and loves us all. 

"Ever filled and ever seeking, what they have they still desire,
Hunger there shall fret them never, nor satiety shall tire, -
Still enjoying whilst aspiring, in their joy they still aspire."
('Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family,' ch. 9,
 from the Latin Hymn of Peter Damiani, † 1072.) 

This is the second in a Lenten series.

Other Lenten posts:
    Ash Wednesday: Confession Booth, February 15

From 2013:

    An  Alternative Narrative: February 10

    Seeking Blessing in a Fracture Land: February 17

    The Poor in Spirit and Those Who Mourn: February 24

    Hungering Far Past "Rightness": March 3

    Guns, God, Mercy: March 10

    Making Peace: What God's Children Do:  March 24

    Where is Newness Needed? March 31

From 2012:

     Looking toward Lent
     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham
     Lenten Silence: Charash, Be Still
     Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb
     Lenten Submission: Rethinking Hupotassō     

     Lenten Song: Remembering Ranan