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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 20^th 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.

Tedpills & Jeremiads: Embracing The Unabomber’s Prophecy

Readings for 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 69: 8-10, 14, 17, 33-35; Romans: 5: 12-15; Matthew: 10:26-33

Today’s readings about convicted criminal-prophets like Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul of Tarsus raise a question for me. The question is, can the recently suicided and convicted criminal, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, be considered a prophet – i.e., an important messenger from the Source of all life? And can we look past his crimes to hear his stark warning?

Please don’t be shocked. I’m serious. Hear me out.

Of course, you remember Kaczynski. He was the anarcho-terrorist responsible for a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others.

Two weeks ago, he was found dead in his North Carolina prison cell. At eighty-one years of age, he had been suffering from late-stage cancer and allegedly committed suicide.

The point here is that during his life, Kaczynski fancied himself a type of prophet. He did.

He thought he was a champion of truth chosen to awaken the world to the destructive forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution. Its technologies, he charged, have enslaved us all. They have turned us into commodities and cogs in a dehumanizing machinery that is destroying the entire planet.

He documented all that in his 35,000-word manifesto published in the New York Times and Washington Post. There the Harvard graduate and brilliant mathematician alleged that the disaster he perceived was reversible only by anarchistic revolution which his bombs (sent through the mail) were intended to precipitate.

The deaths they caused were necessary, he argued, to call attention to the truths contained in his manifesto which otherwise would have gone unpublished. According to Kaczynski, antinomian revolution was required because the main function of our country’s laws (like most legislation) serves to protect the real criminals whose murderous policies always go unrecognized and unpunished. By any measure, he implied, the results of those policies absolutely dwarf any havoc a “Unabomber” might produce to highlight his points.

Prophets & Jeremiads

I bring all of this up because despite Ted Kaczynski’s indefensible tactics, his shock value illustrates the power and impact of Jewish Testament prophets including those featured in today’s liturgy of the word. I’m speaking of Jeremiah of Judah, Jesus of Nazareth, and Paul of Tarsus. Remember, all three of them were considered state enemies. Like Kaczynski in relation to U.S. empire, Jesus and Paul were seen as terrorists and criminals by Rome – every bit as reprehensible as Kaczynski.

Even Jeremiah, though himself not a victim of capital punishment, offended his mainstream contemporaries as profoundly as any. In the 7^th century BCE, he was vilified for boldly and repeatedly asserting that Israel’s infidelity to the God of the poor and oppressed would bring the entire nation to its knees. The prophet was especially critical of Jerusalem’s temple leadership for distorting Sacred Scripture to favor the rich and powerful. As a result of his denunciations, even his family members disowned the prophet.

To get a flavor of what I’m saying about Kaczynski’s relevance to the biblical prophetic tradition, please review with me today’s readings. What follows are my “translations.” (You can check the originals here to see if I’ve got them right.)

Jeremiah 20: 10-13

Like the prophet Jeremiah
Those who speak truth
Against their own nation
Are surrounded by critics
Who constantly terrorize them.

Even their friends and family
Turn against such truth tellers,
Digging up their failings
While ignoring their own.

In this,
The prophet’s only refuge
Is the Great Goddess,
And her unalterable law of karma.
Assuring that everybody
Will get their just deserts.

Arrogant “patriots”
Will inevitably experience
Shame and confusion,
While prophetic truth-sayers
Will be rescued
By the One
Who alone deserves
Their thanks and praise.

Responsorial Psalm 69: 8-10, 14, 17, 33-35

Sadly, Great Mother,
Your faithful prophets
Are routinely
Despised and insulted
By mainstreamers
Even though
You are Mother
To both.
Despite that,
You are unfailingly
Accepting,
Loving, generous,
Kind and helpful
To those of us
Committed to Truth.
You never fail
To answer our prayers.
Despite appearances,
We are therefore
Confident
You will continue
To favor us.
Thank you!

Romans 5: 12-15

None of us is perfect.
Yet laws invented
By defenders
Of the status quo
Make it seem
Like the world’s poor
Are uniquely guilty
And deserving
Of punishment
The poor man
Jesus of Nazareth
Reversed all of that
On behalf of
The planet’s
Impoverished majority.

Matthew 10: 26-33

Yes, the Master
Revealed
That deep dark
Secret
About the injustice
Of human laws.
He shouted
From the housetops
The Truth
That despite legalities,
The world’s
Smallest and weakest
Are recognized,
Worthy, and highly valued
By their Divine Mother.

Conclusion

It's been 25 years since the Unabomber’s arrest and conviction. Over that period, his observations turn out to be more than the screed of a violent terrorist and unhinged conspiracy theorist. They have been proven prophetic indeed.

Our children’s (and our own) addictions to cell phones and social media, the threatening “promise” of AI, the likely human causes and freedom-curtailment of the Covid pandemic, and the recent unprecedented wildfires unleashed by technology-induced climate change, all support the Unabomber’s warnings about technology’s menace.

No wonder, then, that more than a quarter-century removed from his terrorism, Ted Kaczynski has been transformed for many into a kind of edgy, radical guru who by returning to the wild himself is celebrated as having walked his talk.

His “Tedpilled” followers are waiting expectantly for his further vindication that would witness the complete collapse of modern society hastened by its own “success.”

Surprisingly then, the bottom line here might be for us to listen to “criminals and terrorists” like Jesus, Paul – and perhaps Ted Kaczynski. They often speak and embody the truth about our inherently violent culture that lionizes and rewards wholesale murders by the state, while registering surprise, shock, and self-righteous horror at its petty retail counterparts.

Yes, the indefensible crimes of terrorists like Kaczynski (who paid his debt to society) are petty in comparison to those causing forever wars, starvation, and ecocide. Yet today’s terrorists underline what’s wrong with our lives. Their actions can even be seen as perversely salvific.

Besides Jeremiah, Jesus, and Paul, the insightful criminals who come to mind include Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, the Berrigan Brothers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange.

In fact, Kaczynski’s truths (regardless of their source) have led many Tedpillers and others to change their priorities to embrace:

• A widespread “Great Refusal” to (where possible) accept meaningless, poorly paid jobs.
• A contemporary labor movement championing unions and living wages.
• Support for a Green New Deal.
• Caution about accepting unregulated AI until its possibly disastrous threats can be further studied and evaluated.
• And the simple wilderness life Kaczynski himself had adopted.

Nevertheless, we are still waiting for the prophet’s antinomian and implicit anti-war penny to drop.

However, at the very least, Kaczynski’s suicide prophetically reveals the same slow-motion necrophilic process that currently involves and enthralls us all.

Are We Meeting the Risen Christ in Russia and China?

Here’s a video I made fully 9 months ago — at the end of July — about the Ukraine War. It elaborates the argument that I centralize in the homily below.

Readings for the 3rd Sunday of Easter: ACTS 2, 14, 22-33; PSALM 16:1-11; 1 PETER 1: 17-21; LUKE 24: 13-25

Our celebration of the resurrection myth, and of Life’s unlimited powers and possibilities continues for a third week. It invites thoughtful people to scan the list of contemporary events to identify where resurrection might be happening – where death is being defeated by Life’s overwhelming force.

With that in mind, today’s readings for this Third Sunday of the Resurrection suggest that we embrace resurrection as an unexpected new world order arising unperceived before our very eyes.

Could it be that it is surfacing at the hands of Russia, China., and other BRICS Plus nations?

That emerging order can remind attentive truth seekers that movement towards the entirely new and seemingly “impossible” arrangement that Yeshua referred to as the Kingdom of God is not only possible, but necessary. It’s required to draw our species back from the brink of annihilation habitually fostered by a necrophilic United States with its cult of bombing, sanctions, and threats of total annihilation.

Though it might be hard to endure, please let me show you what I mean.

U.S. As Enemy of Humankind

To begin with, resurrection calls us to face death. And in the context, I’m suggesting, we must face the fact that the entity most responsible for plunging the world towards omnicide is our own country.

The Sandinista hymn of the 1980s expressed that clearly when it denounced Yankee imperialism as the “enemy of humankind.”

With that shocking phrase, the Sandinistas were only echoing what in 1967 Martin Luther King had said about the U.S. when he identified it (not the Russians or the Chinese) as the world’s “greatest purveyor of violence.”

Even closer to our own time is Vijay Prashad’s description of NATO (of course headed by the United States) as the “machine that destroys humanity.”

Careful thought makes it difficult to deny the truth of such denunciations:

“We” are the most belligerent country in the world maintaining about 750 military bases across the planet – about 3 times as many as all other countries combined.
“Our” war budget is similarly unprecedented, outlandish, and grossly inflated to more than $2 billion per day.
“We” are the ones responsible for wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Ukraine, and who know where else?
Besides all of that and on an unprecedented scale, “we” have intervened militarily and wantonly changed regimes across the planet for more than a century, especially where the regimes in question have tried to improve the lives of ordinary people rather than the bottom lines of American corporations.
“Our” country is the only one that has ever actually used nuclear weapons and has repeatedly and unilaterally opted out of arms control agreements.
With just 4.6% of the world’s population, the United States aspires to control countries like Russia, China, India, and the whole continent of Africa whose populations (not counting the rest of the Global South) total more than half the world’s inhabitants.
“America” is historically the world’s greatest polluter and is even responsible in large measure for environmental degradation in the Global South (including China), where U.S. corporations have largely relocated for the last forty years.
In summary, the U.S. has worked hard to ensure that it possesses the same control of the world that Hitler coveted for capitalist Germany.

Accordingly, it is easy to see how victims of such policies might well see the U.S. as the greatest purveyor of violence, as the enemy of humankind, and as heading a belligerent organization well characterized as the machine that destroys humanity.

Today’s Readings

Such stark realizations no doubt weigh heavy on the minds of once-proud “Americans” – if they even let them in. We might be like the two disciples in today’s Gospel reading. Like Americans with the historical consciousness just rehearsed, the two were sad and discouraged. For them, all seemed lost. They could think and talk of nothing else but their disappointment about Yeshua’s crucifixion and their frustrated hopes and convictions that he was the messiah their people had hoped would liberate them from Rome’s oppression.

But then amid their sad commiserations, the risen Yeshua somehow joins them. Improbably, the two men don’t recognize him. So, they recount the tale of their dashed hopes for the stranger’s benefit.

But then by breaking bread with them, Yeshua gets his friends to see the truth of what I said earlier – that death must precede resurrection. The old must die, he says, before the ultimately new can arise. Death and resurrection manifested in bread sharing are part of Life’s process – part of the divine “prophetic script.”

For us, and according to that blueprint, death of “America’s” preeminence must precede the New Life our world absolutely requires.

Hope from Russia & China

Still, prophetic script or not, if you’re like me, you remain discouraged by the awful realization of what our country has become. But where’s the resurrection hope to be found?

Strange to say, I see it in two great movements taking place before our eyes – one that’s violent with Russia as its protagonist, the other that’s non-violent and headed by China.

“What?” you might object. How can Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have anything to do with resurrection? The same might be asked about China and its authoritarianism we’ve heard so much about.

Though we might not be able to see the Ukraine War as “resurrectional” (Let me coin that word!) – as changing the world for the better, our brothers and sisters in the Global South can. That’s especially true if they adopt liberation theology’s understanding of “violence.”

You see, according to Global South church leaders like archbishops Dom Helder Camara and El Salvador’s St. Oscar Romero, all violence is not the same. Much of it isn’t even recognized as such. And a great deal of what we do denounce as violence is justified self-defense. For instance, most don’t even recognize international sanctions as violent. But they are. They kill hundreds of thousands.

Neither do mainstream commentators see regime change policies and coups as violence. But they are, especially when regimes that would prevent starvation are replaced by business-friendly governments concerned only with corporate profits.

According to this kind of analysis, Russia’s action in Ukraine is justified self-defense. It’s defense against a U.S.-led NATO’s attempts (since 1990) to reduce Russia to the vassal-like status of the west’s traditional colonies.

It’s no stretch to say that Russia’s resounding “NO” to NATO represents what most Global South countries would choose to shout at NATO if they had Russia’s military might. Arguably, that’s why so many from what we used to call the Third World refuse to condemn Putin or Moscow.

As for China’s non-violent movement towards the “other world” required by our times. . .. It’s enough to point out that China hasn’t bombed anyone in more than 40 years. Instead of dropping bombs on the poor, in effect its Belt and Road Initiative drops schools, roads, ports, high speed railroads, and other infrastructure on them. Like the risen Christ, it “breaks bread” as a sign of God’s presence. It has eliminated extreme poverty for almost one billion of the world’s starving. No wonder Latin America, Africa, and South Asia embrace Beijing and reject DC.

Conclusion

Let me hasten to conclude that I’d be among the first to admit that any war, self-defensive or not, can only be justified as a last resort. And it should justifiably shock anyone to find an alleged follower of the risen Christ lending anything like approval to armed conflict.

But then, it’s also true that most would-be Christians (me included) are emphatically not pacifists. Are you? They (we) fight wars against fellow Christians all the time – as exemplified in Ukraine itself.

However, in attempting to justify violence, one must ask several crucial questions as explained in today’s Sunday reflection. We must ask what kind of violence are we talking about?

Is it largely unperceived structural violence like that embodied in NATO, the machine that destroys humanity?
Is it the violence of self-defense as seems the case in Russia’s refusal (on behalf of the world habitually bullied by the U.S.) to submit to humiliating and suicidal surrender to the 4% attempting to impose its will on everyone else?
Is it the reactionary violence of that 4% to the second level of violence (expressed e.g., by the U.S. arming and advising Ukrainian proxies) to punish Russia’s “NO”?
Or is it the violence of state terrorism represented by all those wars and policies of regime change implemented on weaker (mostly non-white) nations over decades upon decades by the United States?

Of these, only the second level of violence can (reluctantly) be justified in any way.

Ironically, however, the other three are routinely accepted (even by people of faith). Meanwhile, the second level is usually vilified as somehow violating imperialism’s sacrosanct “rules-based order.”

The suggestion here has been that recognizing and accepting the distinctions just explained have something basic to do with resurrection. So does “breaking bread” with the hungry as a sign of resurrection and God’s presence. It’s all about the experience of death to old necrophilic practices and beliefs while recognizing newness of life and new world orders as unlikely manifestations of the risen Christ.

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:

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.
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.”)
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.
Consequently, what the dominant culture accepts as “reality” is actually 180 degrees opposite the Truth.
Its upside-down “reality” is rooted in fear, greed, dishonesty, and violence.
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.”
Facing and correcting our own behavior are necessary first steps in solving any dilemma or conflict.
Such inventory and rectification reveal that no one is attacking us. Instead, we are the attackers.
Recognizing all of this is the key to peace.
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)

“Indecent” Women Doing Liberation Theology Without Underwear: Saints Tina Turner & Chuck Berry

What is the connection between liberation theology and its feminist theologians refusing to wear underwear while writing their articles and books? That’s right: no underwear.

And what is the connection of their resulting theology with the poor lemon vendors in Buenos Aires who, also without underwear, squat defiantly in their full skirts and urinate on the sidewalks in front of watchful and disapproving city police? (Meanwhile, the lemon sellers complain about their “shi*ty priests”, “mafia politicians” and those “puta policia” – fu*kin’ cops).

And what about the mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, who proudly display their completely unrobed bodies on so many contemporary internet sites? Presumably many of them identify as Christians. But by religious standards, isn’t such display “indecent?”

And finally, is there any relationship between feminist theologians and those Argentine lemon sellers, on the one hand, and rock ‘n’ roll music, Tina Turner, and Chuck Berry on the other.

The late liberation theologian Marcela Althaus-Reid (1952-2009) provocatively raised and addressed questions like those during her brief career as Senior Lecturer in Christian Ethics, Practical Theology, and Systematic Theology at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. In doing so, she shed light on women’s rebellions against oppressive patriarchal norms across the planet.

You know what I mean. Think about the reaction to the effective repeal of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court. Think of those Muslim women in Iran who cut their hair in public and refuse to obey the “morality police.” Even consider, if you can, the unspoken meaning behind those mature women around the world who provocatively display their unclothed bodies online for all to see.

Althaus-Reid argued that the above are all doing what she called “Indecent Theology.” Here the reference is to her thesis from her 2004 theological potboiler, From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology: Readings on Poverty, Sexual Identity, and God.

Because of the important light the book sheds on the feminist rebellions just referenced, as well as on liberation theology itself, please consider with me what Althaus-Reid means. Consider the relevance of indecency to liberation theology and to issues like abortion, the morality police, what some might call “pornography,” as well as to patriarchy in general. Consider its connection to rock ‘n’ roll and to popular “saints” like the recently deceased Tina Turner (1939-2023) and Chuck Berry (1926-2017).

Female Indecency

Althaus-Reid begins by reminding readers that Christianity itself is a highly sexualized affair. It is claustrophobically decent. (In what follows, all references in parentheses are to the book just cited.)

She says it’s not that the morality of the Bible in any way endorses Victorian sexual standards. It does not. Instead, its main concerns are liberation in all the senses (economic, political, and spiritual) that the word “liberation” connotes.

That’s because the Biblical tradition was based on the freeing of slaves from Egypt. Its resulting concern was for the welfare of widows, orphans, and resident aliens. Its prophetic tradition boldly spoke radical truth to priests, kings, and other bosses who legislated against, ignored, and/or exploited the poor.

In general, the biblical tradition promised the latter a new and brighter future. The prophet Yeshua called that future the “Kingdom of God.” By that he meant what the world would be like if God were king instead of the world’s oppressive “Caesars.” Such a world would be turned upside down. Its standards of decency would be transgressed at every turn.

Yet despite such a clear emphasis on social justice, it was the biblical tradition itself that ended up doing a headstand instead of the imperial world order. The revolutionary thrust of “The Book’s” pivotal story was tamed by the kings, princes, and popes of the world (27, 28). Far from being scandalous and revolutionary, the Judeo-Christian tradition thus became the defender of the status quo. Its point became the social control of the revolutionary lower classes, with oppressive standards of decency, especially for women.

And why so much attention to women? It is because of their embodiment of the revolutionary energy that the Greeks called eros. As psychologists and philosophers such as Sigmund Freud and Herbert Marcuse have pointed out, eros represents the basic creative energy of the universe.

In a capitalist patriarchal order dependent on overwork, the powers of patriarchy identify eros in the form of female sexuality as the fundamental factor threatening to undermine their entire project. Hence the powers-that-be covertly vilify women for deliciously “tempting” men to find meaning, fulfillment, happiness, and joy in human (and sexual) relationships that undermine the system’s requirement of “surplus repression” in the form of overwork.

And so, repressive concepts of decency in general and of theological decency in particular emerge to dominate women and, by extension, their potential partners. Theological decency decrees that:

• The woman’s body is a source of temptation

• Therefore, it should be covered by layers of clothing.

• Women need men to regulate female bodies and behavior through special rules written by men and (depending on culture and historical period) governing the integrity of women’s sexual organs, their menstrual periods, and issues surrounding marriage, birth control, abortion, divorce, voting and the ability to own property.

• To do theology (i.e., to speak authoritatively about God even in relation to themselves and their bodily processes), women must earn professional degrees grudgingly bestowed by the patriarchal establishment of academia.

• Therefore, the “degrees” informally awarded by the “School of Life” with its deviant and indecent logic are invalid (14, 32, 137). So is the spirituality resulting from lemon vendors engaging in “witchcraft,” in the informal healing arts, working as midwives, abortionists, and spiritual guides.

Theological Indecency

With all this in mind, feminist liberation theologians like Althaus Reid insist on transgressing the limits of theological decency. They insist that:

• Doing theology is a profoundly sexual act (4, 76). To repeat: this is not because sex was central to Jesus’ preaching. Rather it is because the church has for centuries distorted the teachings of Jesus in the service of the empire, acting in the process as an instrument of social control as explained above. Therefore, theologians are forced to write endless pages refuting such distortions.

• Poor women provide the most radical view of theology (16). Their enforced “otherness” teaches us something new about life and about the Greater Queer that some still insist on calling “God” (19).

• Yes, God is Queer (9, 146) in the sense of exceeding all categories and definitions (175) while subverting decent bourgeois concepts like family. [For those who live on the peripheries of society – under bridges, in slums, favelas and shanty towns, “family” ends up being an oppressive category. It arrogantly invalidates alternative basic social groupings that are just as valid, functional (and dysfunctional) as their bourgeois counterparts (159, 160, 164).]

• Far from being a liberating model for Latin American women, the cult of the Virgin Mary ends up functioning as another instrument of social control, this one aimed directly at women (13, 23, 39, 55). After all, Mary is presented as “a gadget” (88) having sex with God without any pre-coital romantic relationship (85). She does not experience sexual pleasure or orgasm from the union (88). And then afterwards she enjoys no meaningful sex life with her husband, Joseph. Such factors are supposed to set an example for all Christian women.

• Similarly, Jesus himself is strangely asexual: a young Hebrew man with no compañera and no unambiguous sexual interests. He also serves as a model of sexual abstinence (45).

• Thus, Jesus was queer in the sense indicated above: an outcast who rejected and was rejected even by his own family. They thought he was crazy (Mark 3:21). He spent a lot of time in the desert. At least once he was tempted to commit suicide by jumping from the pinnacle of Jerusalem’s Temple itself (170).

• In addition, the evangelical representations of Jesus show him as a victim of the machismo of his own culture (45, 48, 51, 80). Yes, he comes to the aid of a woman considered “impure” because of a menstrual problem (Lk 8, 43-48); and yes, he rejects the male executioners of a woman sentenced to death for adultery (John 8: 1-11). However, Jesus never questions the misogynistic patriarchal laws that govern those situations. He does not reject the laws regarding the stoning of women caught in adultery, nor those that classified menstruating women as “unclean” (6, 13).

• In summary, if liberationists take Jesus’ poverty and otherness seriously along with Paul’s dictum that in Christ there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28), perhaps the best contemporary identification of “the Master” would be a twelve-year-old girl prostituted by two men in a public toilet in Buenos Aires (84).

Unclothed Theology in the U.S.

Those are just some of the reflections of Althaus-Reid operating as a professional theologian. Meanwhile, she points out, her less academically prepared Latinx sisters do their theology based on popular beliefs and practices. Their well-earned degrees come from the school of very hard knocks. Their insights, Althaus-Reid suggests, are no less valid than their sisters’ teaching in places like the University of Edinburgh.

So, they defiantly continue to honor Santa Evita Perón. She, after all, secured voting rights for Argentine women over the objections of Argentine bishops (79). They also pray to Santo La Muerte (St. Death), Jesús Bandito, and local popular “gangster saints” who are seen as robbing and stealing from the real thieves and criminals who support those who run the government (161). They have “canonized” deceased popular singers like Rodrigo and Gilda offering them prayers and novenas in chapels dedicated to El Angel Rodrigo and La Santa Gilda (157). Those who honor such avatars kneel in church like Althaus-Reid herself without underwear, engulfed, she says, in the fragrance of female sex, and offering fervent prayers to rock stars no doubt considered “indecent” by church authorities.

All of which brings me to rock ‘n’ roll, Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, and those unclothed grandmas.

Take the grandmas first. Althaus-Reid I think would see them as doing a kind of negative theology protesting the false church-supported Victorian standards earlier referenced. They take indecency to the extreme not just rejecting underwear, but displaying their bodies completely unclothed — not for personal gain like strippers or aspiring models, but just for the hell of it.

Their wordless indecency is consistent with Althaus-Reid’s identification of the female body as a privileged locus of rebellion against patriarchal systems of power (45). Such rebellion echoes the status of their sisters in the Global South as “single women” with no visible men (35).

After all, under patriarchy, the skirts that once signified femininity and even priesthood (37), now only convey a deep alienation (20). Set them all aside!

“Do you want indecency?” rebellious women seem to say. “Well, take a look at this! The patriarchs will not tell us how to behave and what to do with our bodies!”

As for rock ‘n’ roll, Tina Turner, and Chuck Berry. . .. How much saintlier can you get?

During their lives, their music performed the basically feminine function of distracting millions from the overwork mandated by the reigning system denounced by Marcuse. In the process, they brought joy, fun, and happiness to millions of people who ended up attending and participating in the huge liturgies we call “concerts” – even over the protests and askance gazes of uptight Victorians and clergy.

By the standards of Althaus-Reid nothing could be more constructively indecent and therefore holy. Thank you, Saint Tina! Thank you, holy Chuck! Thank you, dear Marcella.

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 18^th 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!

Christian Dominionism, White Supremacy, and Yeshua’s Law of Love

Readings for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time: DT 30: 10-14; PS 69: 14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37; COL 1:15-20; LK 10: 25-37

Recently, Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor and current Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley published an article called “The Ideology of Christian Nationalism.”

The piece reviewed the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” conference held in Nashville in June. The meeting promoted the theology of Dominionism which (ignoring American pluralism) holds that Christians have a duty to take over all aspects of government, culture, and society.

According to Reich, speakers at the convention including Donald Trump and Florida senator Rick Scott, promoted not only a union of church and state but the promotion of “gun violence, the subjugation of women through forced birth, and strongman authoritarianism.”

It all represented, Reich said, an effort of white supremacists to “hold onto power in the face of massive demographic shifts: toward women (who now constitute 60 percent of all university enrollees, and therefore the future power structure) and people of color, and away from formal religion.”

Of course, over the long term, such denial of irreversible social realities is doomed, since (to repeat) it ignores our culture’s religious pluralism and the widespread secularism.

It also runs contrary to the simple message of the selections in today’s liturgy of the word on this 15^th Sunday in ordinary time. Their emphasis is not on the culture wars around abortion (which is nowhere mentioned in the Bible) and gun rights but on love even for enemies (which represented, of course, the heart of our Great Master’s teaching). Much less is the emphasis on the values of the dominant culture.

Promoting love and even admiration of enemies, today’s liturgy presents the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan – the religious and socially rejected outsider whose generosity and compassion put to shame the Jewish dominionists of Yeshua’s day.

(Samaritans were considered enemies of the state, because their ancestors back in the 8^th century BCE, intermarried with Assyrian occupiers of the Jewish homeland. Intermarriage rendered Samaritans unclean. They were simply sub-human.)

So, Jesus’ making a Samaritan the hero of his challenging parable and contrasting the outcast’s compassion with the “couldn’t-care-less” attitude of professional holy men – the priest and the Levite – also connects directly with the hypocrisy of Christians who lack understanding and compassion towards those who don’t share their identity politics or faith.

In doing so, they’ve actually criminalized God’s law of love as described throughout today’s liturgical readings. Read the descriptions for yourself here. For what they’re worth, what follows are my “translations” of their main ideas:

DT 30: 10-14
  
 The Great Liberator, Moses
 Exhorted the former slaves
 To return to LOVE
 The most obvious, uncomplicated 
 Reality
 In the world.
  
 PS 69: 14, 17, 30-31, 33-34, 36, 37
 
 Love is all we need
 From Life Itself.
 It is always kind 
 And helpful
 Overflowing with gifts
 And ready to protect 
 The poor, the imprisoned,
 The exiled,
 And those in pain.
 Yes: All we need is Love.
  
 COL 1:15-20
  
 Jesus, the Christ 
 Shows what Love means – 
 That absolutely everything
 Was created for Love,
 The bond, the glue
 That holds us all together
 In complete at-one-ment
 Transforming the human race
 Into a single body
 Despite resistance
 And crucifixion
 By a hostile world.
  
 LK 10: 25-37
 
 For Jesus (like Moses)
 Love of God and Neighbor
 Is the only law
 Promising fullness of life.
 The two laws are one.
 
 Being “neighbor”
 Means rejecting 
 The ignorance of 
 Professional holy men
 And politicians,
 Adopting instead
 The compassion of
 The very minorities 
 We’re taught to hate
 Who provide
 Health care, transportation, 
 Lodging, mercy
 Follow-up,
 And money,
 For those they have every reason
 To hate.
 
 That’s what it means
 To love Our very Self!

So, Moses was right after all: Love is really all we need. It couldn’t be clearer. Yeshua was right too: Love is God’s only law. There is no other.

Consequently, the theology of Christian Dominionism is wrong. It disrespects not only the Constitution’s separation of church and state, but the religious and moral convictions of human brothers and sisters not sharing their beliefs in the context of a pluralistic culture.

Most importantly however, for the followers of Moses and Yeshua such disrespect violates their teachers’ supreme law of love.