Tag: God

GOP Attacks on Higher Learning: What’s Education for Anyway? And How about Religion?

Readings for the Third Sunday of Advent:Isaiah 61: 1-2A, 10-11; Luke 1: 46-48, 49-50, 53-54; 1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28.

Last week, Americans were treated to a high-level display of hypocrisy, double standards, and pure ignorance regarding higher learning. The spectacle occurred during a House Education Committee hearing about on-campus demonstrations supporting Palestinians in Gaza.

The procedure raised questions not only about alleged anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, but also about the very purpose of higher education.

For me in the context of biblical readings for this third Sunday of Advent, the hearing also touched issues of faith and its dictates regarding the conflict in Gaza. As we’ll see, today’s readings suggest that Christians should stand with Palestinians in their conflict with an Apartheid state turned genocidal – and against the United States now unquestionably revealed (in the words of Scott Ritter) as “the world’s bad guy.”

Let me deal with each of those points successively.

The Hearing & Anti-Semitism 

During the hearing just referenced, rightwing congress member Elise Stefanik (R NY) grilled Harvard president Claudine Gay, her MIT counterpart Sally Kornbluth, and University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill about allowing pro-Palestinian demonstrations on their campuses.

According to Ms. Stefanik, the demonstrations ran the danger of threatening pro-Zionist students.

Ignoring her own history of alleged anti-Semitic positions as well as her votes funding the Zionist genocide of Gazans, the congresswoman’s questioning deceptively linked the term “intifada” to advocacy of extermination of Jews.

Similarly ignoring Zionist claims to “Greater Israel” extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, the congresswoman’s questioning implied that any use of the phrase “from the River to the Sea” uniquely threatened Jewish students. Clearly, Congresswoman Stefanik, along with many Democrats, was anxious to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on Campus.

For their part, the university presidents at last week’s hearing were correspondingly anxious to protect first amendment guarantees on their campuses in today’s context where any talk of Palestinian rights is interpreted as anti-Semitic.   

The whole affair had commentators like Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, viewing the presidents’ grilling and its fallout as an attempt by champions of Zionism to distract from actual genocide (of Palestinians in Gaza) while centralizing highly marginal hypothetical speech about repeating Hitler’s horrendous genocide of Jews.

Meanwhile, right-wing commentators on Fox News offered outright condemnation of the three women presidents’ unwillingness to give a simple “yes” or “no” answer to loaded questions about a complex constitutional issue of free speech.

According to Bill Bennett, the former Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, the whole affair illustrated, how American education at all levels has declined into what some have called “cesspools of liberal propaganda.”  

Education’s Purpose

All this raises questions about the purpose of education in general and of higher education in particular. What is it for?

What do you think?

The relatively new prevailing answer equates the university’s function with pre-professional training. If courses don’t directly prepare students for “the world of work,” they’re a waste of time.

That approach, of course, discards traditional approaches to learning in general as preparation for living meaningful lives that transcend considerations of jobs and income in favor of free discussion and representation of all points of view – even those advocating genocide.

This more traditional approach unabashedly believes that free speech and debate will broaden students’ horizons. And doing so will inevitably challenge students to move from positions of egocentrism and ethnocentrism, from narrow tribalism and patriotism to something like world-centrism and even to cosmic consciousness.

In fact, many educators (like me) would say that’s the whole purpose of education – to help students and professors grow beyond egocentrism and ethnocentrism towards world centrism (where all humans are seen as brothers and sisters) and even to the mystical viewpoint that concludes “there is really only one of us here.”

In fact, reaching that cosmic vision is arguably the whole purpose of life. At least that seemed to be the position of all the world’s great religious traditions including their Judeo-Christian branch. Reaching that point of course would automatically exclude wars of any kind on the grounds that they are all suicidal.

Today’s Readings

And that brings me to the biblical selections for this third Sunday of Advent. Transcending even academic “objectivity,” today’s passages call us to take sides. They call us to side with the Palestinians against their apartheid colonial butchers.

For the readings reveal what scripture scholars call our Great Mother-Father God’s “preferential option for the poor.” They reveal that the Great Spirits themselves take sides. They demand justice for the poor (like the children of Gaza and their mothers) in their struggle against the rich [like the Apartheid Zionists and their genocidal IDF with its (U.S.-supplied) planes, bombs, missiles, and tanks].

Let me show you what I mean by “translating” today’s liturgical selections. Please read the originals here to see if I got them right.

Isaiah 61: 1-2A, 10-11

If you’re possessed by the Holy Spirit, if you have Christ consciousness, you must imitate the Great Mother herself. You must make a “preferential option for the poor.” It prioritizes healing hearts broken by imperial powers. Begin by recognizing the fact that poverty and debt render the poor hostages and prisoners of the rich. However, just like the wealthy, poor husbands and their brides deserve their own sparkling jewels. Put otherwise, wealth redistribution is a simple matter of divine justice which imitates the abundance and generosity of Nature herself.     

Luke 1: 46-48, 49-50, 53-54

Yeshua’s mother recognized all this. Myriam was a poor peasant herself. And yet she, rather than some rich woman, was chosen as the mother of the long-awaited Messiah. So, she militantly praised the Divine One for feeding the hungry while specifically rejecting the rich. She glorified the Great Source for standing with Myriam’s people when they were unjustly occupied by imperial Rome.

1 Thessalonians 5: 16-24

Paul of Tarsus experienced Myriam’s consciousness as well. It expressed, he said, the Spirit of Yeshua himself whose prophetic program was identical with Isaiah’s (Luke 4:18). Yes, Paul said, Yeshua’s “preferential option for the poor” represents the criterion separating authentic interpretations of the Lord’s message from those of deceptive charlatans. The latter “solve” problems by war, rather than by peace which respects soul, body, spirit, and the absolute integrity of human community.    

Isaiah 61:1

Lest you forget, we repeat: Christ’s Good News is addressed primarily to the poor, not the rich.

John 1: 6-8, 19-28

That’s what John the Baptizer recognized too. He was poor people’s alternative High Priest. His Temple was the Jordan’s wilderness, not Herod’s urban Temple. Yet, neither John, nor Elijah before him, nor any of the great prophets was anywhere near as radical as Yeshua. John merely baptized with water; Yeshua, his disciple, would administer a baptism that conferred the very Spirit of God – the fiery Spirit that preferred the poor to the rich.

Conclusion

Like secular universities, religious people within the Judeo-Christian tradition should never censor free speech. That’s because good-willed people hold all kinds of opinions. Even advocates of genocide deserve places at the table, in congressional hearings, at teach-ins, discussion groups, and bull sessions. Our Constitution’s First Amendment (every bit as important as the Second) demands that.

But today’s readings invite subscribers to the Judeo-Christian tradition to go further still. They summon followers of Isaiah, Myriam, Paul, and Yeshua to stand with the poor and powerless – with victims of empire and colonialism. The readings urge adoption of the divine “preferential option for the poor” by imagining what today is impossible, but as our aspirational North Star. And that means standing with Gazans against their genocidal oppressors.

To me at least, that further means:

  • Getting informed about the tragedy unfolding before our eyes.
  • Recognizing and naming the crime of genocide even when its perpetrators were once victims of genocide themselves.
  • Denouncing all violations of international law as such including indiscriminate attacks upon and wholesale slaughter of children, women, and the elderly.
  • Also including policies of collective punishment, carpet bombing, destructions of medical facilities, use of chemical weapons (such as white phosphorous) and assassinations of teachers, doctors, and members of the press.
  • Identifying “national leaders” like Israel’s Netanyahu and U.S. “Genocide Joe Biden” as international criminals.
  • Calling for the latter’s arrest and trial by the international court. (If that can be done for Russia’s President Putin for much lesser crimes, why not for Netanyahu and “Genocide Joe?”)
  • Similarly identifying Apartheid Israel and its enabler the United States of America as criminal nations.
  • Calling for their expulsion from a restructured United Nations that strips a nation representing 4.2% of the world’s population from overriding the will of the overwhelming majority of the U.N.’s membership.

Xi Jinping To Biden: You Can Do Multipolarity The Hard Way or the Easy Way; It’s Your Choice!

Readings for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Proverbs 31: 10-13, 19-20, 30-31; Psalms 128: 1-5; 1st Thessalonians 5: 1-6; Matthew 25: 14-3

What do you do about an economic system you no longer believe in? What if it’s just interested in the monetary bottom line – making money without doing any real work. What if it shows no concern for women and their children?

Do you simply go along with something like that?

The readings for this Sunday show that it’s an age-old question.

Last week’s meeting between Joe Biden and China’s president, Xi Jinping raised it again.

Let me show you what I mean.

Biden Meets Xi

So, they finally met. Xi Jinping and old man Biden in San Francisco. That happened last Thursday at the insistent request of U.S. president’s team.

According to Alexander Mercouris, Xi showed up on his own terms predetermining where the summit would take place, making sure the streets would be cleaned up, and that there would be no anti-China demonstrations. China also set the meeting’s agenda.

Before that, however, the Chinese president gave two speeches to high level representatives of the U.S. business community, including Elon Musk and Bridgewater CEO, Ray Dalio. At both, he received standing ovations for saying that China’s doors are open for mutually beneficial business deals.

And the point of those agreements would not be to advance “America First,” or “China First” agendas, but to benefit everyone on the planet – prioritizing women and children.

China’s system, Xi implied, is not about favoring the wealthy according to some trickle-down theory. It’s about improving the lives of everyone, beginning with the least – as shown by China’s elimination of extreme poverty in its own context.  

Perhaps despite all that, the U.S. business community liked what it heard. Again, those standing ovations. It likes Xi. It knows which side its own bread is buttered on.  

But then came Xi’s meeting with Biden. What happened there?

Well, according to the Chinese readout as summarized by Mercouris, President Xi gave our old man a stern lecture.

America and China are at an unprecedented crossroads, Xi said. The U.S. can either take the path of cooperation or of opposition. The choice is up to America since it’s responsible for most of the world’s turmoil. Its response to virtually every problem is military.

According to Xi, choosing cooperation will help both countries prosper and the entire world as well. The path of opposition promises to end in tragedy for everyone.

China has its own problems, Xi went on. It has no desire to replace America as world hegemon. However, in our planet’s new multi-polar context, it will not abide U.S. interference in China’s internal affairs.

For instance, tensions between China and Taiwan will inevitably be resolved according to their shared timetable. The U.S. should therefore stop arms shipments to Taiwan. The latter is, after all, recognized as part of China by the State Department itself. Trying to further widen any gap between Taiwan and China promises those tragic consequences that Xi had referenced earlier.

And what was old man Biden’s response?

Platitudes and false smiles. Nothing about lifting sanctions or cancelling plans for more arms shipments to Taiwan. Just something about American and Chinese military officials maintaining communication and vague references to cooperation on climate change.

Then, after marveling at the luxurious design of Xi’s Chinese-made limousine, Biden bid his counterpart adieu smiling broadly. As Xi’s car drove away, the old man gave a triumphant fist pump as if he had accomplished something significant.

Subsequently, “our leader” convened a brief press conference where he promptly dismissed Xi as a “dictator.”

So much for diplomacy, not to mention maturity – from an octogenarian!

Today’s Readings

To repeat: I bring all of that up because today’s readings centralize something like the choice Xi Jinping described – between on the one hand something like the American hard, unfeeling exploitative economic system where the rich reap where they did not sow and on the other hand, a system like China’s that takes care of women and children.

That is, according to today’s liturgy of the word, prioritizing human need entails centralizing the role of women. Meanwhile, systems that primarily serve the rich are condemned in Jesus’ famous Parable of the Talents.

See for yourself. Here are my “translations” of today’s readings. You can find the originals here.

Proverbs 31: 10-13, 19-20, 30-31

Deeply centered women are the anchors of the world – far more than the superficially beautiful and apparently charming. The value of virtuous women is beyond precious jewels. They not only benefit their own families with food and clothing; they also recognize and share what they have with the marginalized and poor. In fact, homemakers should be paid for housework and given high positions in government.

Psalms 128: 1-5

Whether they know it or not, such women and those they care for are blessed. They are following the Divine Mother’s path. The gardens they cultivate (actual and metaphorical) overflow with rich foods. Face it: they are responsible for the very continuance and prosperity of humanity. The men in their lives should honor them accordingly.

I Thessalonians 5: 1-6

In fact, women’s pregnancy processes provide an apt image for the Divine Mother’s New World that we all anticipate. The enlightened among us (as opposed to those living in darkness) can already feel that the labor pangs are about to begin. Alert and clear-headed, the light-bearers stand ready like midwives to assist in the birthing.  

Matthew 25: 14-30

Such assistance in service of our Mother’s New Reality calls for departure from business as usual – from a system that rewards the 1% who do no actual work, but who rely on investments that end up enriching the already affluent while further impoverishing and punishing the poor and exploited.

Parable of the Talents

As I was saying, the readings just reviewed are about economic systems – one that treats its beneficiaries like the family they are, the other that prioritizes money and profit. The first three readings from Proverbs, Psalms and 1st Thessalonians reflect the values of a tribal culture where women’s productive capacity was still highly valued.

On the other hand, Jesus’ Parable of the Talents centers on the male world of investment and profit-taking without real work. In the end, the story celebrates dropping out and refusing to cooperate with the dynamics of finance, interest, and exploitation of the working class.

Taken together, the readings put one in mind of the contrast between China’s more people-oriented economy over against the U.S. exclusively profit-oriented system.

More specifically, Jesus’ parable contrasts obedient conformists with counter-cultural rebellion like the one embodied in Xi Jinping’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” The former invest in an economic system embodied in their boss – “a demanding person” the parable laments, “harvesting where he did not plant and gathering where he did not scatter.”

In other words, like neo-liberal capitalism itself, the boss is a hard-ass S.O.B. who lives off the work of poor women farmers like those celebrated in the Proverbs selection. The conformists go along with that system to which they can imagine no acceptable alternative.

Accordingly, the servant who is entrusted with five talents (more than 2 million dollars!) gains 2 million more and the one given two talents doubles his money as well. 

Meanwhile, the non-conformist hero of the parable (like China) refuses to adopt a system where, as Jesus puts it, “everyone who has is given more so that they grow rich, while the have-nots are robbed even of what they have.”

Because of his decision to drop out, the rebel suffers predictable consequences. Like Jesus and his mentor, John the Baptist, the non-conformist is marginalized into an exterior darkness which the rich see as bleak and tearful (a place of “weeping and grinding of teeth”).

However, Jesus promises that exile from the system of oppression represents a first step towards the inauguration of the very Kingdom of God. It is filled with light and joy.

Conclusion

China has taken more than that first step. It has rejected the U.S. model of world hegemony in favor of a multi-polar world.

If you don’t believe that, just think of China’s elimination of extreme poverty for almost a billion human souls. Its Belt and Road Initiative (now enrolling at least 150 countries) is a model of what the U.S. used to celebrate as “foreign aid,” but without strings attached or connection to regime change.

And all of this as well without juvenile fist pumps, name-calling, or sanctions that expel the disobedient into that darkness outside with its wailing and grinding of teeth.   

Yes, we need a change of economic systems – and of leadership that shows the maturity, patience, and diplomacy of Xi Jinping.   

Scott Ritter, Hamas, Terrorism, & the Judeo-Christian Tradition

Readings for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time: Malachi 1: 14b-2: 2b, 8-10; Psalm 131: 1-3; 1 Thessalonians 2: 7b-9, 13; Matthew 23: 1-12

The liturgical readings for this 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time are about the hypocrisy of national “leaders” who bring disgrace to their office and who become for their people a curse rather than a blessing.

They pretend to know more than the ones they “serve.” As a result, though they might say the right words about freedom, peace, and even “God,” every action they perform contradicts the basic divine imperative (found in all the world’s Great Religions) to treat others as we would like to be treated.

Consequently, the only policy these hypocrites know is war. In Israel-Palestine, they supply weapons to kill women and children (centralized in today’s readings) and they prefer continued slaughter to cease-fires.

Religious pretenders all, they disgrace themselves before the world’s poor majorities who know exactly what lawless settler-colonialists (and their facilitators) are always about. As Haitian film maker, Raul Peck has shown, they’re always about ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, and outright extermination. Always!

Today, the whole world is watching the script unfold once again in Apartheid-Israel.

 A Pro-Palestinian Demonstration

All of that was brought home to me two weeks ago when I attended a pro-Palestinian rally in New Haven, Connecticut near the Yale campus.

By my estimate the highly enthusiastic crowd that gathered there numbered between 2000 and 3000 people. We marched from the New Haven Green through the town’s center chanting slogans like “Free, free, free. . . free Palestine!” The whole experience was highly inspiring.

The signs people carried were inspiring too and very thought-provoking. One caught my eye more than others. It made me think more deeply about Hamas. It caused me to realize that contrary to acceptable opinion in the United States, Hamas is not “pure unadulterated evil” (as our confused president’s handlers made him say). Neither is it simply a “terrorist organization.”

The sign I’m referring to read “OCT. 7 IS AN OUTCOME NOT A TRIGGER.”

I took that to mean “IF YOU PUT HAMAS’ ‘TERRORIST’ ATTACKS IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT, THEY BECOME FAR MORE UNDERSTANDABLE THAN THE MUCH WORSE APARTHEID-ISRAELI RESPONSE TO THE HORRIFIC EVENTS OF OCT. 7TH.”

So, before we get to this Sunday’s readings, let’s once again think more deeply about Hamas. This time, my guide will be Scott Ritter, the former weapons inspector in Iraq who tried to tell our government that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. He was relieved of his post as a result. As usual, the White House and Congress preferred lie to truth.

Hamas

According to Ritter, Hamas is not a terrorist organization. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, a NATO member, agrees.

For Ritter, Hamas is no more terroristic than were Americans like Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty whom the British called “terrorists” during the Revolutionary War.

Hamas, he says, is also no more terroristic than was Menachem Begin, the future Israeli Prime Minister.  Back in 1946, Begin headed the Zionist Irgun gang which set off explosives in the King David Hotel, killing 91 people and injuring 45 including women and children. (Later, invading Israeli settlers ended up killing 15,000 Palestinians whose homes and other property they stole outright.) Begin’s goal in that strike against Great Britain was to bring international attention to the Zionist campaign for a Jewish homeland.

Seeking similar international attention for the largely ignored Palestinian cause, Hamas has at succeeded in putting Palestinian statehood back on the table. According to Ritter, its bold action has shaken up a calcified, Zionist-and-American-dominated Middle East.

In that sense, October 7th was highly successful and a game changer. In fact, it eliminated the principal obstacle to peace in the Middle East – Israel’s opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state. Simultaneously, by provoking a predictable overreaction by Apartheid-Israel, Hamas has succeeded in turning a global majority against the Zionists.

In Ritter’s eyes, rather than an act of terrorism, October 7th was a brilliantly planned military assault carried out with far more precision and far less collateral damage than what we witness Israel doing now.     

The former U.S. Marine analyst points out that such observations are supported by the testimony of Kibbutzim survivors of the Oct. 7th Hamas attacks. The survivors claimed that it the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were responsible for most of the casualties falsely attributed to Hamas. The IDF’s indiscriminate fire killed large numbers caught in crossfire between the Hamas cadres and the IDF.

Ritter concludes with a probing question. If you’re against Hamas’ tactics, he asks, tell me what you would do as an alternative. Gazan resisters have tried non-violent approaches with the First Intifada (1987-1993) and Second Intifada (2000) and in the Great March of Return in 2018. The demonstrations achieved virtually nothing for the Palestinians on Israel-Palestine’s West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. Instead, direct action by Palestinians saw hundreds of peaceful protestors killed and maimed by Israeli snipers. Very few in the West remember that, even if they were aware of their implementation at the time.

Such failures have heightened despair, desperation, and anger in the Gazan concentration camp. Every Gazan man, Ritter claims, wakes up each morning with one thought in mind. Perhaps like Jews in Auschwitz, he thinks of the Israeli concentration camp guards and wonders, “How can I hurt them today?”

Such desperation led to the desperate acts of October 7th.  

If any of us were forced to live under similar circumstances, Ritter concludes, we’d likely be thinking the same way. With Patrick Henry’s famous words in mind, he speculates that if you asked Gazans if they would give their lives to free their people, most of them would probably reply affirmatively. For this reason, Hamas communiques refer to the thousands and thousands of victims of Apartheid-Israel’s terrorism as “martyrs.”

Today’s Readings

Please keep all of that in mind as you read this Sunday’s liturgical selections. I’ve “translated” them below. You can read the originals here to see if I got them right.

Malachi 1: 14b-2: 2b, 8-10

The Great Goddess promised Jewish priests that they and their people will be cursed if they forgot the nature of Mosaic Covenant. It was forged to protect slaves escaped from Egypt – to protect the poor and powerless. Priestly hypocrisy, She promised, transforms into curses any “holy words” uttered to bless Israel. The whole people suffers when official decisions favor the rich instead of God’s impoverished and oppressed. After all, everyone without exception has dignity in the eyes of the One Creator. Ignoring that simple fact violates the essence of God’s Law.

Psalm 131: 1-3

Favoring the poor is the key to peace. That however is something the rich cannot see as they concern themselves with their “great things” and their “sublime” matters which they deem beyond the ken of the poor majority. But even a still and quiet child on its mothers lap exhibits more wisdom than the haughty. What children embody gives hope for peace.

1 Thessalonians 2: 7b-9, 13

The apostle Paul understood that truth. He went even further. For him nursing mothers offered lessons about generosity and self-giving. They embodied the love of our Great Mother. Accepting that helped Paul see everyone as a sister or brother worthy of his service and hard work. His vision enabled him to communicate the very word of the Great Goddess to any who cared to listen.

Matthew 23: 1-12

That’s what Yeshua did too. He understood the power of the Mosaic tradition about the liberation of the oppressed. However, he also saw that the politico-religious “leaders” of his day were hypocrites. They said the right words, but never lived them. Rather than bringing the “Good News” of God’s peace and love, their laws and policies made matters worse for the poor. Their concern was not that of the Great Mother, but with retaining personal power, profit, pleasure, and prestige. “Don’t be like that,” Yeshua said. Consider no one your Master, no one your Father. Instead, be humble and serve. Think for yourselves!  

Conclusion

Those words speak for themselves. Like the ancient Jews, we’re led by hypocrites and liars. They should not be our masters. Though old and feeble, they are not our fathers. They are worthy of contempt and curses.

Far from embodying the Golden Rule, their guideline seems to be lawlessness, revenge, extermination, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Don’t be like them, Yeshua says. Their actions speak louder than their lying words.

Not Even God Gave Unconditional Support to the Jews –And None at All to Their Imperial Backers

Readings for 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time:Isaiah 45: 1, 4-6; Psalm 96: 1-10; 1st Thessalonians 1: 1-5b; Matthew 22: 15-21

During Apartheid-Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestine, we’re privileged to be confronted each week with readings from the “holy books” of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Muslims of course also consider those sources as divinely revealed.

Since Apartheid-Zionists invoke that shared tradition to justify their policies, let’s examine them closely.

This week’s selections are particularly relevant to the current ongoing slaughter inflicted by Apartheid-Israel because they raise questions concerning God’s so-called “chosen,” and of their relation to imperialism and colonialism – all concepts that figure prominently in what’s unfolding today in Palestine.

The central idea in today’s readings is that those who side with empire cannot pretend to belong to Israel’s God. There can be no dual citizenship simultaneously in empire and God’s Kingdom.

That simple idea applies both to Apartheid-Zionists and their American supporters whose imperial identity and unconditional support for Zionism makes them Apartheid-Americans.

Instead, today’s readings reveal that it is non-Jews who because they liberate captives from empire, qualify as God’s “chosen” – even as messianic.

They are the ones who belong to the Kingdom proclaimed by the Jewish Prophet Yeshua whose program (as he put it) was to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, liberty to captives, and a Jubilee Year centralizing debt forgiveness (Luke 4: 18).. Being “chosen” was not a question of ethnicity, he said, but of doing the right thing in favor of the oppressed and poor.

Today’s Gospel selection from the Jewish Matthew is also strongly anti-imperial as well as anti-hypocritical. It deals with the question of paying taxes to Caesar.

Let me show you what I mean by (1) recounting the most relevant shocking facts unfolding in the Middle East while the whole world is watching; then (2) sharing my “translations” of the readings for this 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time; (3) pointing out their relevance for Apartheid-Israelis and their U.S. enablers as together they ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip, and finally (4) drawing some conclusions about the entire situation.

Israel-Palestine Today

Thursday night U.S. President Joe Biden pledged unwavering, unconditional support of Apartheid-Israel.

Assuming his leadership of NATO colonial powers (against the rest of world opinion) he proclaimed that Apartheid-America is:

  • What holds the world together,
  • Is universally loved,
  • Exceptional,
  • Indispensable,
  • All-powerful,
  • And unconditionally allied with Apartheid-Israelis,
  • Who in the face of Hamas’ pure evil,
  • Are admirably strong and resilient.

The president made these claims just after having:

  1. Claimed (without any investigation or citing any evidence) that Hamas (“the other team” as he put it) not Apartheid-Israel was the one responsible for the war crime of destroying a large Gazan hospital at the cost of at least 600 Palestinian lives, not to mention the seriously injured,
  2. Rejected (according to Alexander Mercouris) proposals to empower an independent investigation into that claim,
  3. Been slapped in the face by Arab leaders who refused to meet with a U.S. president.
  4. Vetoed a UN Security Council proposal calling for a humanitarian pause in Apartheid-Israel’s bombing campaign which had already claimed 3000 Palestinian victims, more than half of whom were women and children.

In the face of such hypocrisy, Mr. Biden’s claims about Apartheid-America appear pathetic, out-of-touch, and almost laughable. The aging president appeared to “protest too much.”

But over-protest is what declining empires have always done. Before their fall, they routinely divinize themselves, claim omnipotence, and pretend to be interested in peace.

That’s what the Roman Empire did. Or as Tacitus put it: “They create a wasteland and call it peace.” Romans even minted coins identifying the counterpart of Mr. Biden – Mr. Caesar – as God himself.

Imperial subjects have always seen right through such idolatry, drivel, and tired slogans. In response, they laugh, or cry, or like Hamas kill those who sympathize with or cooperate with apartheidism and its imperial supporters.

In today’s Gospel selection, Yeshua takes the humorous approach. He tricks his opponents into admitting their own hypocrisy. Going against their own rules, they’re exposed as bearers of idolatrous images on the occupiers’ coins.

Let’s look at the readings. What follows are my “translations” in the light of the remarks I’ve just made. Check out the originals here to see if I got them right.

Today’s Readings

Isaiah 45: 1, 4-6

600 years before Jesus, the Christ,
The LORD chose a non-Israelite,
Cyrus, king of Persia,
As His Anointed!

Yes, He tapped Cyrus,
As his “Christ,”
Because that non-believer liberated 
Israeli captives
From their Babylonian Captivity.

And this 
Though Cyrus 
Knew nothing of “The LORD,”
But merely did the right thing,
By freeing the enslaved.

This means that 
The all-powerful
Divine Parent 
Doesn’t care 
About “nationalities”
Or nation states
About “Israel” or “Persia,”
But only about justice and liberation
Of the downtrodden!

Psalm 96: 1-10

For such holy Carelessness
Because the Divine One
Loves us all,
Regardless of our origins
Or intellectual beliefs,
We are all grateful and happy!

1st Thessalonians 1: 1-5b

For instance,
Paul’s community in Thessalonica
Found location in Greece,
Not Israel.
It housed both Jews and Gentiles.
Their identity was based
On commitment to peace,
And on faith expressed 
By sharing solidarity 
With the poor
Identified by Yeshua
As God’s favorites
And liberating them
As the whole point
Of his prophetic work.

Matthew 22: 15-21

Jeshua's opponents
The populist Pharisees
And Roman puppet Herodians
Knew nothing of 
God’s universal love.
While denouncing idolatry,
They hypocritically
(And against their own law) 
Carried Roman coins,
Identifying Caesar
(Not the Divine One)
As God.

So, the trickster Yeshua 
Turned the tables on them all,
Charging
That such hypocrisy
Meant that they
Belonged to Caesar,
Not to God!

For Yeshua,
Paying taxes wasn’t the issue.
Religious hypocrisy was.

The irreverent 
Construction worker
From nowheresville Nazareth 
Was so funny,
And such a smart debater!

Conclusion

The title of this homily is meant to highlight what I’ve just said. It underlines the fact that no nation – not Israel, not our own, not anybody’s – deserves “unconditional support.”  

That’s because nation states are just fictions. Think about it. They are devices used by the rich and powerful (who often have stolen “their” land from indigenous people) to artificially separate a single people for purposes of dividing, ruling, and self-enrichment by way of practices like the taxation Jesus refused to endorse.  Here by “single people,” I’m talking about humanity itself.

As for the indigenous themselves, every tribe believes it was divinely chosen (and in some sense, I guess they are). All indigenous people believe that the land their ancestors originally inhabited is exceptional and directly given to them by some Divinity.

And of course, in the case of Israel-Palestine, Apartheid-Israelis are not “the indigenous” and never were. They arrived in Palestine in 1948. They were European colonizers from places like Poland, Romania, Hungary, Russia (and lately) from the United States. And as Chomsky points out, any ownership claims based on 2000-year-old religious mythology can have no serious political standing in the modern world. To claim otherwise borders on the superstitious and ridiculous.  

Moreover, even Zionists’ Exodus traditions admit that more than 3000 years ago, invading Hebrews from Egypt took part of Palestine from indigenous Canaanites and others by force of arms. I’m referring to Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites, Geshurites, Maacaathites, and Philistines. All of those represent the indigenous ancestors of the Palestinians whose presence in the Holy Land long predated the arrival of Hebrews.

The bottom line is, however, that In the end, God or Source, the Ground of Being, the Divine Mother, Truth, or Life Itself (however you understand Ultimate Reality) doesn’t give a damn about ethnicity or race or national identity – except when they are used by imperial agents to divide and rule.

In fact, the Holy Books of the Judeo -Christian tradition make that point again and again. Most of the Bible’s books record the infidelities of Israel’s leadership and God’s punishment for their routine infidelity. This morning’s readings are no different. Neither are the events unfolding in Apartheid-Israel today.

Does Apartheid Israel Have A Right To Exist?

Readings for 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Isaiah 25: 6-10a; Psalm 23: 1-6; Philippians 4: 12-14, 19-20; Ephesians 1: 17-18; Matthew 22: 1-14

One of the often-repeated memes justifying Apartheid Israel’s oppression of Palestinians was repeated yesterday by presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson. In an otherwise admirable statement (see below) “On the Israeli-Hamas War,” and in reference to Hamas’ surprise attack on Jewish settlements Ms. Williamson wrote:

“Hamas is a terrorist organization, and this was a terrorist attack. The aspirations of Hamas have nothing to do with striking a peace deal with Israel; their stated goal is the complete eradication of the state of Israel, and they will settle for nothing less.”

Of course, we’re all familiar with such perceptions, even though Hamas is much more complicated than Ms. Williamson allows.

Nevertheless, what if Hamas’ position as alleged by Williamson is correct? What if Apartheid Israel has no right to exist and as such deserves to be eradicated?

That might be a shocking idea for most. But what if it’s correct?

That’s a thought I’d like to explore in today’s homily which will try to relate it to today’s Gospel selection. There the Jewish author Matthew attempts to explain why Israel actually did cease to exist as a nation and was driven from the Holy Land after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. The words Matthew attributed to Yeshua also suggest a rejection of Israel as God’s “Chosen” in favor of the socially marginalized who more resemble today’s Palestinians. Read them for yourself here.

My reflection will also include candidate Williamson’s wise and highly practical recommendations for ending the current conflict in Palestine.

Finally, I’ll add a call for truthful reconciliation between Jews and Palestinians who are actually brothers and sisters according to the religious traditions of both peoples.

Apartheid Israel

Begin by briefly thinking about apartheid and state legitimacy.

Did apartheid Rhodesia have the right to exist? What about apartheid South Africa? And Nazi Germany?

I’d say NO in each case. Apartheid systems are abhorrent, immoral, and always terroristic. And according to Amnesty International, Israel’s version represents an egregious crime against humanity.

Yes, Israel’s system is illegal. To begin with, it flies in the face of UN Resolution 242 which mandates return of all Palestinian lands seized since 1967.

This means that every one of Apartheid Israel’s settlements on the West Bank and its incursions into East Jerusalem and Gaza are illegitimate. So are its periodic bombings of Palestinian neighborhoods, and its associated and regular mass killings of Palestinians including women, children, and members of the press.

As a result, Apartheid Israel is an internationally criminal nation. International law condemns it in no uncertain terms. As an apartheid system, it has no right to exist.

The same international law, while prohibiting Hamas’ acts of terrorism, accords to Palestinians the right to take up arms against its oppressors.

Today’s Readings

As I said, I bring all of that up this Sunday because the day’s central liturgical reading has the Jewish prophet, Yeshua of Nazareth, condemning the leaders of his people for going along with a Roman system of discrimination. They cooperated with the foreign occupiers and hence refused to share the land’s abundance (its God-given “banquet”) with the poor and oppressed whose welfare is centralized in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Yes, the Jewish high priests and elders cooperated with the Roman occupation forces in repressing poor Jews, Samaritans, Canaanites, and resident aliens while neglecting such rejects who were always the favorites of Yeshua and Israel’s Divine Parent.

Today’s Gospel selection responds to such refusal and cooperation with an apartheid system.

It is the familiar parable about a king who throws a wedding party for his son. But the ones originally invited to the feast ungratefully refuse to come. They’re all too busy with selfish pursuits. Some even kill the king’s servants who bring the invitation in person.

In response, the king destroys the murderers themselves and reissues his invitation to the poor and marginalized.

But what does the parable mean? Historical considerations help us answer that question.

The story represents the reflections of a Jewish author called “Matthew” writing for Jews at least a half century after Yeshua’s death. Matthew knows that Jerusalem was completely razed to the ground by Rome in the year 70 CE. As a nation with its own homeland, it ceased to exist. His question is why?

The answer Matthew puts in Jesus’ mouth explains Jerusalem’s erasure in terms of karmic punishment meted out to its “leaders” for refusing God’s abundant gifts and not sharing the abundance of the Promised Land (referenced in today’s first three readings) with those Matthew describes as mere street people – outsiders, “the good and bad alike.”

In other words, Matthew’s judgment is that the land of Israel belonged to all its inhabitants not just to Jews, Israel’s political class and the rich – and certainly not to the Romans. Refusal to share God’s banquet for all led to the death of a nation.

Moreover, the parable suggests the Jewish Matthew’s new understanding of “chosen people.” God’s “chosen” are (and always have been, Matthew realizes) the poor and oppressed in general. They are people like today’s Palestinians — rather than a single arrogant, rich, and self-satisfied ethnic group represented by the “priests and elders of the people.”

Applying the Parable

The question for us today is how can Yeshua’s prophetic vision of a new chosen people and a motherland shared with the poor and oppressed be applied to Israel-Palestine now?

The answer is: By ending all systems of apartheid and recognizing humanity itself (including both Jews and Gentiles) as God’s Chosen.

Here’s where Marianne Williamson becomes more helpful and articulate than Joe Biden or anyone else in our country’s vengeful Uni-party. In today’s context, she advises:

  • Establishing a U.S. Department of Peace as a cabinet level office.
  • Making peacebuilding not war the cornerstone of American foreign policy.
  • Standing firmly not only with Israel, but “no less” for the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people.
  • Beginning a deeper dialog on the current situation by meeting not only with Jewish American leaders (as President Biden has done) but with Arab-American leaders (particularly Palestinian).
  • Ending the siege of Gaza.
  • Immediately restoring power there and access to food, water, and medical supplies.
  • Establishing humanitarian corridors offering Gazan civilians and foreign nationals safe passage.
  • Changing U.S. policy towards Israel so that while continuing to support it militarily, the changes emphasize the need for justice towards the Palestinians.
  • Moving the U.S. embassy back to Tel Aviv.
  • Demanding justice for the American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead by the Israeli Defense Forces.
  • Strongly opposing Israeli occupation of the West Bank, illegal settlements there, and the blockade of Gaza.
  • Demanding that no military assistance to Israel be used to support any of those policies.
  • Supporting all efforts to create the resurrection of plans for a two-state solution to the problems of Israel-Palestine.
  • Working assiduously with Middle East peace builders both in Israel-Palestine and in the United States.
  • Using American power to side with our highest ally: humanity itself.

To Ms Williamson’s list I would add for the sake of clarity: Never referring to Israel without calling it “Apartheid Israel.”

Conclusion

In faith perspective, what is really needed to solve the current problems in Israel-Palestine is a genuine process of truth and reconciliation. Israel-Palestine needs a Truth and Reconciliation Process like that implemented in South Africa after the end of apartheid there.

To begin with, truth demands that both parties recognize the fact that they are cousins at least, if not brothers and sisters. Both Jews and Palestinian Arabs are Semites. In that sense, both have been guilty of anti-Semitism.

Both peoples also share horrendous histories as victims of prejudice and persecution – both communities at the hands of Christians for centuries, and Palestinians by Jews since the beginning of the 20th century and especially after 1948.

Both Jews and Palestinians must also confess and repent of their acts of terrorism. Jews must face the fact that they have unrelentingly terrorized Palestinians on a daily basis since 1948. And despite their internationally recognized right to take up arms against their Jewish occupiers, Palestinians must admit that nothing can justify responses like those we all witnessed last week.

Such facts and admissions alone should provide bonds of honesty, humility, empathy and shared identity that can soften hearts and open the way to any peace and reconciliation process.

As candidate Williamson would put it: “humanity itself” demands such fellow-feeling, confession, repentance, and open hearts. So does the entire Judeo-Christian tradition – which, of course, is shared by Muslims as well.

Marianne Williamson Should Go for Broke As The Peace Candidate

Readings for the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 12: 1-4A; Psalms 33: 4-5, 18-22; 2nd Timothy 1: 8b-10; Matthew 17: 1-9

On this Second Sunday of Lent and in the context of the Ukraine conflict, I want to return to the topic I addressed in last week’s homily – Marianne Williamson’s apparent sell-out to western warmongers in her position paper called “The Tragic Conundrum of Ukraine.”

Since then, Ms. Williamson has become the first Democrat to declare her candidacy to unseat Joe Biden as President of the United States. Yes, it’s official; she’s running again for president.

My point in what follows is this: For Williamson to have even the least chance of achieving her goal, she must go for broke. She must reverse her position on the Ukraine war and declare herself in no uncertain terms THE PEACE CANDIDATE.

Doing so would not only separate Williamson from Biden and the others who will eventually enter the 2024 race. More importantly, it would align her more securely with the principles of her own spiritual guidebook, A Course in Miracles (ACIM). As well, it would embody the example of Yeshua (the voice ACIM claims to channel) as reflected in today’s Gospel reading. There following what we’ve come to see as his “transfiguration,” Yeshua too decides to go for broke in his opposition to imperialism.

My point here is that to garner any meaningful notice as a candidate, Williamson needs to spiritually transfigure as well.

To show what I mean, let me (1) address Williamson’s candidacy as it relates to the war in Ukraine on the one hand and to ACIM on the other, (2) recall Yeshua’s adoption of a “go for broke” strategy in opposing Roman imperialism, and (3) recommend a similar strategy for Williamson if she truly wants to be a player in 2024.

Williamson & ACIM

First, recall who Marianne Williamson is and how easily she will be dismissed if she continues endorsing business as usual by adopting “the official story” and conventional wisdom about Ukraine as expressed in her “Conundrum” statement: She’s the one:

  • Dismissed by many as a “vanity candidate” intent only on selling books.
  • Characterized as “new agey, soft, and unrealistic.”
  • Portrayed by SNL’s Kate McKinnon as “woo-woo,”
  • And as one who would address political problems by burning sage and manipulating crystals.
  • Ridiculed for alleging that “a dark psychic force” has made us all victims of collectivized hatred advanced by Donald Trump.

This time around, the same accusations will inevitably surface again unless Williamson does something authentic to distinguish her from Biden and the neocons and their bellicosity on Ukraine.

Instead, however, her statement on the war aligns itself with the largely white “West” (13% of the world’s population) as if it rather than the world’s mostly non-white majority “knows better.” She says, for instance,

“I believe there is legitimate justification for military support for Ukraine from Western allies, including the United States.” And “. . . Vladimir Putin’s actions today are a threat to which the Western world must now respond.” (Emphasis added).

One wonders why this emphasis on the largely white west. Again, does it somehow know better than mostly non-white cultures (e.g., in China and India) that have developed insights, wisdom, and spiritualities based on experiences thousands of years older than our own?

Does this western centrism represent an unconscious hangover from the colonial past that has enriched “the west” and impoverished the rest?

But more especially, how explain Williamson’s apparent rejection of the most obvious teachings of A Course in Miracles, which she has championed for decades?

Here’s what I mean. According to A Course in Miracles:

  1. Its teachings are basically Christian mysticism that finds the root of all problems in a skewed relationship with God – or Source, the Ground of Being, the Great Spirit, the Tao, Brahmin, Allah, Life, Cosmic Consciousness, etc.
  2. That mysticism also reveals that “America” is not an exceptional nation. (Or as Ms. Williamson is fond of putting it “No one is special, and everyone is special.”)
  3. Instead, all of us are living in a pseudo-reality reminiscent of Plato’s Cave, where prisoners mistake shadows manipulated by their keepers for reality far removed from the real world.
  4. Consequently, what the dominant culture accepts as “reality” is actually 180 degrees opposite the Truth.
  5. Its upside-down “reality” is rooted in fear, greed, dishonesty, and violence.
  6. This means that while the prevailing culture would blame our problems on others (like Russia), the Truth is that we (the United States) are 100% responsible for our own “conundrums.”
  7. Facing and correcting our own behavior are necessary first steps in solving any dilemma or conflict.
  8. Such inventory and rectification reveal that no one is attacking us. Instead, we are the attackers.
  9. Recognizing all of this is the key to peace.  
  10. It embodies the miraculous in the ACIM sense of “a radical transformation of consciousness.”

Now, imagine if Marianne Williamson’ presidential campaign emphasized those ten points. It certainly would get attention. It would separate Williamson from the homogenized gaggle of candidates. It would raise the essential questions that no one dares raise. It would mark Ms. Williamson as a true leader worth following.

What I’m saying here is that unless Williamson finds the courage to go for broke by embracing the principles that she has taught for so many years and by identifying as The Peace Candidate, she’ll be lost in the shuffle. She’ll be ridiculed and dismissed once again.

Yeshua Goes for Broke

Today’s Gospel reading presents Jesus as setting an example Marianne Williamson would do well to follow. By resolving to take a leading part in a Passover demonstration against Jewish cooperation with imperial Rome, Yeshua risks it all.

Think about it.   

Today’s reading finds the young construction worker from Nazareth on his way to Jerusalem, where he knows something extremely risky is about to happen. Yet he’s determined to be part of it. The risky action has to do with the temple and opposing the collaboration of its leaders with the Roman Empire.

The temple has become worse than irrelevant to the situation of Yeshua’s people living under Roman oppression. What happens there not only ignores Jewish political reality. The temple leadership has become the most important Jewish ally of the oppressing power. And Jesus has decided to address that intolerable situation despite inevitable risks of failure.

Everyone knows that a big demonstration against the Romans is planned in Jerusalem for the weekend of Passover. There’ll be chanting mobs. The slogans are already set. “Hosanna, hosanna, in the highest” will be one chant. Another will be “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Hosanna” is the key word here. It means “save us!” (The Romans won’t notice that the real meaning is “Save us from the Romans.” “Restore an independent Israel – like David’s kingdom!”) It was all very political.

Yeshua has heard that one of the main organizers of the demonstration is the guerrilla Zealot called Barabbas. Barabbas doesn’t call what’s planned a “demonstration.” He prefers the term “The Uprising” or “the Insurrection” (Mk. 15:6-8).

Barabbas has a following as enthusiastic as that of Yeshua. After all, Barabbas is a “sicarius” – a guerrilla whose solemn mission is to assassinate Roman soldiers and their Jewish collaborators. His courage has made him a hero to the crowds. (Scripture scholar, John Dominic Crossan compares him to the Mel Gibson character in “The Patriot.”)

Yeshua’s assigned part in the demonstration will be to attack the Temple and symbolically destroy it. He plans to enter the building with his friends and disrupt business as usual. They’ll all loudly denounce the moneychangers whose business exploits the poor. They’ll turn over their tables.

As a proponent of nonviolence, Yeshua and his band are thinking not in Barabbas’ terms of “uprising,” but of forcing God’s hand to bring in the Lord’s “Kingdom” to replace Roman domination. Passover, the Jewish holiday of national independence could not be a more appropriate time for the planned demonstration. Yeshua is thinking in terms of “Exodus,” Israel’s founding act of rebellion.

And yet, this peasant from Galilee is troubled by it all. What if the plan doesn’t work and God’s Kingdom doesn’t dawn this Passover? What if the Romans succeed in doing what they’ve always done in response to uprisings and demonstrations? Pilate’s standing order to deal with lower class disturbances is simply to arrest everyone involved and crucify them all as terrorists. Why would it be different this time?

So before setting out for Jerusalem, Yeshua takes his three closest friends and ascends a mountain for a long night of prayer. He’s seeking reassurance before the single most important act of his life. As usual, Peter, James and John soon fall fast asleep. True to form they are uncomprehending and dull.

However, while the lazy fall into unconsciousness, the ever alert and thoughtful Yeshua has a vision. Moses appears to him, and so does Elijah. (Together they represent the entire Jewish scriptural testament – the law and the prophets.) This means that on this mountain of prayer, Yeshua considers his contemplated path in the light of his people’s entire tradition.

According to the Jews’ credal summary in Deuteronomy 26, their whole national story centered on the Exodus. Fittingly then, Yeshua, Moses, and Elijah “discuss” what is about to take place in Jerusalem. Or as Luke puts it, “And behold, two men were conversing with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.” Yeshua’s Exodus!!

It is easy to imagine Moses’ part in the conversation. That would be to remind Yeshua of the chances Moses took when he led the original Exodus from Egypt. That might have failed too. Nevertheless . . .

Elijah’s part was likely to recall for Yeshua the “prophetic script” that all prophets must follow. That script has God’s spokespersons speaking truth to power and suffering the inevitable consequences.

Elijah reminds Yeshua: So what if Barabbas and those following the path of violence are defeated again? So what if Yeshua’s nonviolent direct action in the temple fails to bring in the Kingdom? So what if Yeshua is arrested and crucified? That’s just the cost of doing prophetic business. Despite appearances to the contrary, Yeshua’s faithful God will somehow triumph in the end.

Conclusion

Is there a message in today’s reading for Marianne Williamson, who is undoubtedly the best equipped public figure to take on the essentially spiritual role of Peace Candidate?

I think there is.

The readings call her to:

  • Insist that we’ve indeed all be grasped by a “dark psychic force” that ignores shared humanity and sees war as a first option rather than as a last resort.  
  • Be transfigured into 2024’s Peace Candidate by heeding Moses, Elijah, and Yeshua, the champions of her native Jewish faith.
  • Be transformed as well by listening to the world’s non-western, mostly non-white majority and their reluctance or downright refusal to endorse U.S. insistence on controlling the world far from its own shores.
  • Recognize that in line with the teachings of A Course in Miracles, the U.S. and NATO are 100% responsible for the Ukraine crisis.
  • Call for an immediate ceasefire and diplomatic negotiations to end the war.
  • Go for broke by ignoring those who will characterize her opposition to the war as naïve and unrealistic – as if risking nuclear annihilation were more sophisticated and mature.
  • Truly embrace the teachings of A Course in Miracles that identifies the source of peace in its refusal to be frightened by non-existent threats and attacks.
  • Or as The Course puts it: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the PEACE of God.” (Emphasis added)

Christmas: When Religion Is Capitalism and Market Is Our God

Recently I got involved in a debate about the relevance of religion. A fellow contributor to OpEdNews took the position that because its myths can be interpreted to support either right or left-wing political positions, the myths themselves are meaningless and so is religion itself.

Accordingly, the latter, he said, should be rejected entirely in favor of 18th century rationalism like that expressed by Thomas Paine. For my debate partner, a world without myth is a richer, more peaceful (!), less problematic one.

I can’t get that argument out of my mind especially at this Christmas season.

The position in question ignores the fact of class struggle and that any document worth its salt be it the Bible, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or the writings of Paine himself will be subject to conflicting interpretations by forces of the left and right. Far from rendering meaningless the documents just referenced, the conflicts only underline their importance and power.  

Nowhere does that become clearer than in the cases of mythology, poetry, and art. No holiday better underlines the power of myth and the battle over its interpretation than Christmas.

Capitalism’s Christmas

Of course, right-wing interpretations of Christmas have carried the day in America for well more than a century – perhaps always. I’m talking about the holiday’s commercialization. It unveils the true religion of America. It discloses the fact that ours is perhaps the world’s most prominent religious fundamentalist culture.

That’s hard for many to see because America’s religion is a masked capitalism that pretends to be secular. However, capitalism’s God is real and all powerful. It’s called Market. In the Freudian sense, it’s a fetish – a human creation treated like a conscious subject with an infallible mind and will of its own. Market decrees who’s rich, who’s poor, who lives, and who dies. It directs our holy wars. For true believers to transgress its decrees for instance by advocating socialism is heretical and punishable by war, death, and excommunication in the form of economic sanctions. (Cuba is a case in point.) 

Market’s accompanying supporting myths are powerful too. All of them, of course are unprovable and unfalsifiable. They involve tales of a guiding “Invisible Hand,” Natural Order, a basically competitive Human Nature, Bulls, and Bears, free markets, trickle-down, democracy, the richest country in the world, and “America as leader of the free world.” No amount of contrary evidence can disprove such fairy tale convictions for Market’s faithful. That means that despite protests to the contrary, it’s all religion. It’s all myth.

Even those who insist on “the reason for the season” routinely reduce the religious meaning of Christmas to maudlin reflections on cute babies, mangers, shepherds in bathrobes, and church services that do nothing to challenge capitalism, commercialization, and the God called Market. Popular Christianity’s silence on the point ends up endorsing the whole embarrassing mess and its entrenched superstitions.

And so, Christmas is dominated by Market’s epiphanies such as Black Friday, “shopping days till Christmas,” special sales, plastic toys, meaningless gifts, and the deity’s final decree whether the season was economically successful or a flop. It’s all about Santa Baby, Rudolf, and Jingle Bells. Not a mention here of the Jesus Myth and its fundamental challenge to all of that.

(By the way, that the Bible’s Christmas story is a myth says nothing about its truth. In fact, from time immemorial, humans everywhere have employed myth to express the deepest truths about life that would otherwise remain ineffable – arguably the most important ones that escape our five senses. They’ve used mythological markers like those appearing in the Christmas story – divine signs, virgins conceiving, angel appearing, special stars shining, sorcerers perceiving hidden meanings, symbol-laden gifts, dreams, evil kings, and narrow escapes.)

Christmas Truth

And so, what’s the truth of Christmas? For those of us who recognize class struggle, as well as the truth and power of mythology, it’s about:

  • A houseless working-class family
  • Living in an insignificant country (maybe like Yemen)
  • Under a hated occupying empire (certainly like the United States)

It’s about:

  • An unwed teenage mother
  • Driven by state violence to seek refugee status in Egypt
  • Whose son grows up to become a poor street preacher
  • Without home or visible means of support
  • Announcing a Kingdom without Caesar
  • Where the poor will and rich will exchange positions
  • And all debts are forgiven

It’s about:

  • The child growing up to be an enemy of the state
  • And of its supporting religious establishment
  • To become a victim of torture
  • And capital punishment
  • But the founder of a renewed Jewish community
  • Where there are no poor
  • Or private property
  • But where everyone holds all things in common
  • Until that community too is destroyed
  • By the reigning imperial state (in 70 CE)
  • Only to be co-opted by that empire (in 325)
  • To become its most enthusiastic supporter
  • Down to our own day.

Conclusion

Sometimes I feel myself almost hating Christmas. Even within my own family, I can’t mention the meanings just listed without eyes rolling in my adult children’s heads – without being accused of negativity and politicizing an otherwise happy holiday. Let’s keep Christmas meaningless is the unspoken injunction.

It’s like the debate I mentioned at the outset. There the unspoken imperative is to close our eyes to the reality of class struggle. It is to surrender the most meaningful language we have – that of myth, poetry, image, art, and history – to the forces of the right to support their own capitalist religion, their own Market God, and their hideous distortion of one of mythology’s most powerful stories.

But I’m reluctant to do so. Like the entire Jesus story, Christmas is about a new political reality (the Kingdom of God). It’s about a coming Great Reversal where the rich will be poor and the poor rich. It’s about debt forgiveness, and about living a communal ideal that is far closer to what capitalism treats as the heresy of communism than to the masked religious creed supporting the destructive idolatry of the Great God Market.

The Ukraine War, Serenity & the Dawn of Hope

Readings for 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time: MAL 3: 19-20A; PS 98: 509; 2 THES 3: 7-12; LK 21: 28; Lk 21: 5-19

As I read the news each day, I find myself wondering if we’re living in the “end times” described in biblical “apocalyptic” literature like we find in today’s liturgy of the word. I hope we are.

That’s because in the Bible, “apocalypse” isn’t a threat of doom, but a promise of hope. It’s not about the end of the world, but the end of the corrupt (imperial) order in which believers so often found themselves. The Book of Revelation (Unveiling), for example, pulls back the curtain covering first century Roman corruption and promises that it will all soon end.

In that sense, something similar seems to be happening today. (That’s what I try to point out in the video above.) Something new and hopeful is dawning worldwide.

For example, in Ukraine and on behalf of the Global South, Vladimir Putin is digging in the heels of those traditionally oppressed by U.S. imperialism and European colonialism and shouting a firm “NO!” to the bullies involved.

And then last week, I could hardly believe it when China’s President, Xi Jinping quoted Reinhold Niebuhr‘s “Serenity Prayer” at German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz. In effect Xi told Scholz that a new multipolar world has dawned and there’s nothing he or NATO can do about it.

I bring all of that up because this Sunday’s liturgy of the word addresses the promise of God’s new order (aka the Kingdom of God). It promises a reordering of the political, economic, and spiritual status quo that turns everything upside down. The promised purge features the definitive downfall of those now governing the planet. It promises justice, peace, and happiness for the rest of us. That’s the real meaning of the Jesus’ proclamation. It describes what the world would be like if the GREAT SOURCE (not Rome or the United States) were in charge of the world. 

However, the liturgy also affirms the uncomfortable fact that before that Great Reversal, true followers of Jesus must endure severe persecution — very troubled times like our own. According to the Master, great trials must precede the Kingdom’s institution. Jesus promised arrests, judicial silencings, jailings, and general persecution for those with the courage to follow his example as an opponent of empire and injustice.

See that theme for yourself by reviewing today’s readings here. In any case, what follows are my “translations” of those selections. They describe the new order (or what scripture scholar, John Dominic Crossan calls “God’s Great World Clean-up”) as advocated by the Jewish prophetic tradition and by Jesus himself. In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus outlines the inevitable consequences for any who act to hasten the Kingdom’s eventual arrival:

MAL 3: 19-20A

 Scorching times are coming
 For the rulers
 Of this world!
 Root and branch
 They will be destroyed
 In purging fire
 When God’s Great Clean-up
 Finally sets things right.

PS 98: 5-9
  
 The Great Purge
 Will at last establish
 God’s justice
 On earth
 Including environmental rectification
 For the entire planet,
 With its seas and mountains.
 Above all,
 It will mean
 Equity and justice
 For the whole human race.
 Everyone should be
 Happy about that.
  
 2 THES 3: 7-12
  
But don’t relax.
Long ago,
 Some in Paul’s community
 Thought the Purge
 Would take place
 “Any day now.”
 So, they stopped working.
 “Don’t do that,”
 Said Paul.
 “Your faith
 Shouldn’t make you 
 A burden to others.”
  
 LK 21:28
  
 However,
 Just because
 The Great Purgation
 Has yet to occur,
 Don’t lose faith.
 Know that it is
 Still somehow
 At hand
  
 LK 21: 5-19
  
So, you’re wondering,
Are you,
When exactly
The Great Clean-up
Will take place?
It will happen in three stages
 
First, there’ll be
Wars, terror and insurrections
Along with natural disasters
That will leave
Religion in a shamble.

Secondly, all kinds of charlatans
Will show up
Claiming to speak for Jesus.

Thirdly, even family members
And religious authorities
Will blame believers for all of it.
They will hate, persecute, and arrest them 
For simply following the Master,
Handing them over
To civil authorities
Deeply fearful
Of the wisdom 
Of their unassailable defenses.

 Jesus’ recommendations?
 1.     Reject false Christs.
 2.     Trust the Holy Spirit within.
 3.     Endure imprisonment.
 4.     Persevere!

All of that represents an extremely high bar, don’t you agree? Following the martyr, Jesus – the tortured one, the one imprisoned on death row, the victim of capital punishment – is never easy.

But does that mean that those of us living beneath the lofty bar set by Jesus are lost? Can we not be part of God’s Great World Clean-up?

Let’s hope that we can.

At the very least however, here’s what we can do in line with today’s final reading:

  • Reject false Christs by realizing that the meek and mild Jesus of mainstream Christianity is a distortion of the one recognized as subversive by the Roman Empire and by the compromised Judaism of his day. Jesus meek and mild represents the false Christ the Master himself warns against in today’s Gospel reading.
  • Instead, embrace Jesus’ rebel Spirit as much as possible by for example refusing to patriotically accept “official stories” about either Russia or China. Despite their very evident limitations, both are resisting imperialism and neo-colonialism.
  • Pray for the Spirit of civil disobedience that inspired great people of faith like the prophet from Nazareth.
  • Don’t be discouraged by delays in the Kingdom’s arrival or by the apparent victories of its enemies. Persevere!

Declaring America “A Christian Nation?” Here’s Hoping 60% of Republicans Get Their Wish!

Readings for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time: AM 6: 1A, 4-7; PS 146: 7-10; I TM 6: 11-16; LK 16: 19-31 

This week’s liturgical readings couldn’t be more relevant to the world that’s unfolding before our eyes. It’s a world where one person dies of hunger every four seconds, while over 215,000 individuals worldwide are now worth more than $50 million.

Ours is also a world where 60% of Republicans find themselves wishing that the United States would officially be declared a Christian nation.

But what would happen if people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis got their wish? What if America were truly Christian?

According to today’s readings, it’s not what Republicans think.

If “America” truly became Christian, we’d have to address the issue of hunger on the one hand and extreme wealth on the other. We’d have to deal with the fact (as Richard Wolff argues in the video above) that the tradition in question favors socialism rather than capitalism. We’d be forced to recognize the truth of liberation theology.

Let me show you what I mean by reminding you about liberation theology and then by showing how today’s readings represent a virtual catechism on the movement as the Judeo-Christian tradition’s most authentic interpretation — its enfant terrible so challenging that even popes feared its world changing potential.

Liberation Theology

Well, you might ask, what is liberation theology?

To answer that question fully, please look at my blog entries under the “liberation theology” button. I’ve written a series on the question. In my blogs, you’ll find that I always define it in a single sentence. Liberation theology is reflection on the following of Christ from the viewpoint of the world’s poor and oppressed. That’s the class of people to which Jesus himself belonged. They constituted the majority of his first followers.

When read from their standpoint, accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds – the entire Bible for that matter – take on depths of meaning and relevance to our contemporary world that are otherwise inaccessible to people like us who live in the heart of the wealthy world.

From the viewpoint of the poor, God passes from being a neutral observer of earth’s injustices to an active participant with the poor as they struggle for justice here on earth. Jesus becomes the personification of that divine commitment to the oppressed. After all, he was poor and oppressed himself. The Roman Empire and its Temple priest collaborators saw to that.

Going back to the Jewish Testament, the Exodus (Yahweh’s liberation of slaves from Egypt) was God’s original and paradigmatic revelation. The whole tradition began there, not in the Garden of Eden.

Moreover, the Jewish prophetic tradition emphasized what we now call “social justice.” Even more, Yeshua of Nazareth appeared in the prophetic tradition, not as a priest or king. Jesus directed his “ministry” to the poor and outcasts. The Gospel of Luke (4: 18-19) has Jesus describing his program in the following words:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

After his death, Jesus’ followers continued along those lines. They lived communally, having sold all their worldly possessions and distributed the proceeds to the poor.

Today’s Readings

All of that finds vivid expression in today’s liturgy of the word. As I said, it’s a kind of catechism of liberation theology. The reading from Amos the prophet describes the sin that most offends God – wealth disparity in the face of extreme poverty. Amos decries a “wanton revelry” on the part of the wealthy that sounds like the “American Way of Life” or the “Lives of the Rich and Famous” that we Americans find so fascinating.

The prophet describes a rich class that lives like King David himself – in luxurious houses, overeating, drinking wine by the bowlful, and generally ignoring “the collapse of Joseph,” i.e., the poverty of their country’s most destitute. For that, Amos says, the rich will ultimately suffer. All their wealth will be confiscated, and they will be driven into shameful exile.

In railing against the rich and defending the poor, Amos was calling Judah back to the worship of Yahweh whose attributes are described in today’s responsorial psalm. There God is depicted as loving the just and thwarting the ways of the wicked. The psalm describes Yahweh as securing justice for the oppressed, giving food to the hungry, and setting captives free. He gives sight to the blind and protects resident aliens, single mothers, and their children.

Then today’s excerpt from 1st Timothy outlines the characteristics of those who worship that God by following in Jesus’ footsteps. They keep the commandment which is to do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

According to St. Paul, that means pursuing justice and living with devotion, faith, love, patience, and gentleness.

Finally, the gospel selection from Luke chapter 16 dramatizes the sinful relationship between rich and poor and the destinies awaiting both. Luke tells the story of the rich man and “St. Lazarus” who is honored by the poor throughout Latin America and especially in Cuba.

It is significant that Lazarus is given a name in Jesus’ parable. Usually, we know the names of the rich, while it is the poor that remain anonymous. Here matters are reversed. To remedy this anomaly, tradition has assigned the wealthy man a name. He’s called “Dives,” which is simply the Latin word for rich man.

For his part, Lazarus is quintessentially poor, hungry, and lacking medical care. His sores are open and the only attention they receive are from dogs that lick his wounds.

Meanwhile, Dives seems completely unaware of Lazarus’ presence, though the beggar is standing at his very doorstep. Within the sight of Lazarus, the wealthy one stuffs himself with food to such a degree that the scraps falling from his table would be enough to nourish the poor beggar. But not even those crumbs are shared. How could Dives share? He doesn’t even know that Lazarus exists.

So, the two men die, and things are evened out. The rich man goes to hell. We’re not told why. Within the limits of the story, it seems simply for the crime of being rich and unconsciously blind to the presence of the poor. For his part, Lazarus goes to the “bosom of Abraham,” the original Hebrew patriarch.

Lazarus is rewarded. Again, we’re not told why. Within the story, it seems simply because he was poor and Yahweh is partial to the poor, just as he was to the slaves God intervened to save when they were starving in Egypt.

Seated with Abraham, Lazarus feasts and feasts at the eternal banquet hungry people imagine heaven to be. Dives however is consumed by flame in the afterlife. Fire, of course, is the traditional symbol of God’s presence, or purification, and of punishment. This seems to suggest that after death, both Dives and Lazarus find themselves in the presence of God. However what Lazarus experiences as joyful, Dives experiences as tormenting.

And why? Simply, it seems because Dives was rich, and Lazarus was poor.

Conclusion

In the “Ask Prof. Wolff” video posted above, Marxist economist, Richard Wolff responds to the question, “What is the relationship between Christianity and capitalism?”

Prof. Wolff answers perceptively (as does liberation theology) that Christianity started out from its Jewish roots as a slave religion. In fact, the Judeo-Christian tradition is unique in the corpus of great western literature for recording the experience, faith, and hopes of oppressed people.

However, even within the tradition itself, it’s easy to detect a struggle between Israel’s royal classes (epitomized in King David) and their poor subjects (defended by the prophets). More often than not, the royals wanted to wrest away from the poor their experience of God as on the side of the oppressed.

Professor Wolff points out that that sort of “battle of gods” continued far beyond biblical times.

And so, the tradition’s God of the oppressed was co-opted by ruling classes under imperial Rome, and under systems of slavery, feudalism, and now capitalism. In this way, the ruling classes turned a liberator of slaves into the oppressor of the poor.

The Christianity that 60% of Republicans favor celebrates such a God. “He” (sic) is concerned abortion, LGBTQ+, and trans issues – none of which are even mentioned in the Bible. He even supports American nationalism, a “prosperity” understanding of salvation, and an accompanying disregard and even hatred of any Lazarus people dying every four seconds at our very doorstep.

Today’s readings expose the wrongheadedness of all that. And In the process, they suggest the power of Yeshua’s own understanding of God. The readings address and propose wealth-sharing remedies for the planetary hunger and wealth disparities that plague a world divided between a starving St. Lazarus at our gates and the super-satiated Dives that we Christians have become.

Abraham & Yeshua Correct My Primitive Understandings of God

Readings for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Genesis 18: 20-32; Psalm 138: 1-8; Colossians 2: 2-14; Romans 8: 15bc; Luke 11: 1-13.

My remarks this Sunday will be brief. All day yesterday, I worked hard on a revision of my letter to my granddaughter, Eva. Recall that last Thursday she left for a two- week service project in Panama. That made me want to help her understand her context and how it related to U.S. history and even to U.S. support for the war in Ukraine. You can find that revised text here. I published it on OpEdNews where I’m a senior editor.

But even as this Sunday is running out (It’s now 5:00 in the afternoon) I find myself unable to resist reflecting on the extraordinarily beautiful readings for this 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (as if these times could in any way be described as “ordinary!”).

My inability to shut my mouth is sparked by the fact that this Sunday’s readings speak directly to my lifelong struggle to free myself from a very primitive understanding of God inflicted on me (and so many others) by my strict Catholic upbringing. Thankfully, today’s readings end up offering liberation from that understanding.

I mean, here I am a would-be theologian formally trained in that discipline for 12 years in the Catholic seminary, and for five years in Rome till I got a doctorate in moral theology. And then I taught theology-related courses for 40 years at Berea College — all the time studying liberation theology with some of its greatest proponents in Italy, Germany, Brazil, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and India.

And though it’s true that all that study long since caused me to change my idea of God INTELLECTUALLY, I must confess that PSYCHOLOGICALLY and EMOTIONALLY, I’ve struggled to liberate myself from an idea of God inflicted on me initially by the good Sisters of St. Joseph (whom I still love and admire) at St. Viator’s Elementary School on Chicago’s Northwest side. (I went to school there from 1946 to 1954.)

It was an idea of God as strict patriarch, law giver, and judge. Yes, he (sic) was one who judges, condemns, and punishes especially any transgressions connected with sex.

(Do any of you share my experience?)

Anyway, that idea was driven even deeper by my pre-Vatican II seminary training in the Society of St. Columban by the wonderfully good and sincere Irishmen who taught me there from 1954-1967. But at least until Vatican II (1962-’65) they too were captives of this Great Judge who (in retrospect) I now see as closer to a devil figure than the Divine One manifested in Yeshua of Nazareth — along, of course, with the Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed, and untold (literally) indigenous religious figures.

I’m pleased to say that my post-Vatican II studies in Rome (1967-’72) liberated me from my primitive conceptions — at least, as I said, intellectually. Ironically, I was saved there (and in my late seminary years) from “God” (or should I say “Satan?”).

Well, it’s that more angelic Divine One replacing the diabolic Great Punisher who receives welcome emphasis in today’s lessons. Please read them for yourselves here. Then check out my “translations.” I hope I got them right.

I know that I’ve joyfully tried to capture their liberating spirit.

Genesis 18: 20-32

Imagine a man,
A human being,
Mere dust and ashes
Proving himself 
More moral,
More just,
More compassionate,
Than his entire tribe
And even
(It seems)
Than God Himself!

That was 
Our Ancient Father
Abraham
Who incredibly
Defied his 
Vengeful people 
And persuaded
Its wrathful 
War God
Not to massacre
The 50,000
Of arch-enemy Sodom
If only 
10 innocents
Could be found
Among them.

Now there
Was a great theologian! 

Psalm 138: 1-8

Yes,
Abraham replaced
Israel’s unforgiving 
Warrior God
With a loving Parent,
Responsive to human need,
Truthful and kind,
Especially to the oppressed
Protecting them 
From all harm.

That Great
 All Parent
Indeed merits
Praise and thanks.

Colossians 2: 2-14

And imagine
That Great Parent
Further manifesting
Compassionate divinity
Even more fully
Than Abraham.

Yes,
It happened in Yeshua,
The precious expression
Of God’s boundless
Forgiveness
Though our transgressions
Might be greater
Than Sodom’s
And condemned 
By merciless human law
Even demanding
Our execution
As it did Yeshua's.

Romans 8:15bc

Far from
A cruel War God,
Yeshua said
We could
Call such a 
Source of Life
Daddy!
Yes “Daddy!”
Halleluiah!!

Luke 11: 1-13

That’s what
Yeshua meant
When his friends
Asked for 
A prayer like John’s.

"Say this," 
The Master replied:
“Papa, we love you,
Keep all of us
Safe,
Well fed,
Debt free, just, 
Unthreatened,
And filled
With your Spirit.

"The One
Who always gives
Good Gifts
(Never stones or snakes)
Inevitably responds
To a simple prayer 
Like that
Or even a silent one
Breathed 
Only from 
Your heart’s 
Holy Spirit."

Isn’t that great? Far from being a harsh Patriarch, Judge and Punisher, Yeshua’s Yahweh (and Abraham’s at least in this tale) is more like a soft loving Mother, one who frees from reactionary human laws, and who loves, appreciates, and rewards.

We can’t hear too much of that.

Hallelujah indeed!