I’ve given up on the Democratic Party. For reasons that are listed below, I’ve drawn the conclusion that our country’s only hope is to support a 3rd party to contest the strangle hold the Democratic and White Party (aka the Republicans) have on a gridlocked national government.
Fact is, to this point I’ve cared more about getting Democrats elected than the Democrats themselves have. They currently control the White House, the Senate and the House, but still have allowed the White Party to rig elections (through gerrymandering and voter suppression laws) for at least the next decade. Democrats could stop this, but have decided not to.
I’ve had enough of that.
So, at this late stage of my life, I’ve decided to put my activist efforts into supporting The People’s Party. I’ve begun my campaign on its behalf by making the following proposal to a group of highly motivated seniors from New York and Connecticut whose company I’ve joined just recently.
See what you think. And if it makes sense to you, sign up for People’s Party membership and follow the suggestions below to get its candidates on the ballot where you live.
Proposal for Joining the People’s Party
GIVEN THAT:
The United States is a failed state.
Whose gridlocked political system daily shows itself incapable of the radical change demanded by rampant inequality, climate chaos and the threat of nuclear war,
Since practically speaking, it has become a single War Party state
Whose White Party and its almost indistinguishable “opposition” (the Democrats) have both been captured by Wall Street, the Military Industrial Complex, and by the health care, pharmaceutical, and fossil fuel industries – as well as by the gun lobby,
And whose corporate agendas (despite Democratic control of the presidency, House, and senate) have blocked legislation addressing issues touching the lives of ordinary people such as:
Medicare for all
$2000 stimulus checks (vs. Biden’s $1500)
$15 minimum wage
Cancellation of college debt
Free college tuition
Electoral reform
Passage of the PRO Act (protecting the right of workers to organize)
Immigration reform
Normalization of relations with Cuba
Stopping the war in Yemen
Etc., etc., etc.
All rendering the U.S. more fascist than democratic (i.e., a police state supporting corporate interests rather than those of “the people” while blaming national dysfunctions on the poor and powerless),
AND GIVEN THAT:
Democrats simply ignore progressives because the latter have nowhere else to go
Despite existence of an unmistakable national hunger for profound political change
Evidenced by the fact that
62% of Americans want a 3rd party (up from 57% just last September)
50% of Americans now identify as “Independent” and therefore constitute a de facto 3rd party left without meaningful representation
With only 25% identifying as Republican and 25% as Democrat.
AND GIVEN THAT:
The members of our Men’s Group feel great urgency to leave the world a better place
By using our various skills (organizational, activist, administrative, academic, inspirational, journalistic, artistic . . ..)
And the wisdom gathered from long experience-packed lives
Readings for 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time: Wis. 6:12-16; Ps. 63: 2-3; I Thes. 4:13-18; Mt. 25:1-13.
Last Thursday, Juan Gonzalez of “Democracy Now” provided the best post-election analysis of voting trends that I’ve heard. It sharply departed from the conventional wisdom that, he said, routinely wonders about the “under performance” of black and brown voters in the just-completed general election.
Instead, Gonzalez pointed out that African American, Latinx, Chicanx, and even Native American voters stepped up in an unprecedented way with more of them voting than ever – and most of them, of course, casting their ballots for the Biden-Harris ticket.
True, he said, there was a 2% increase in the number of them voting for Donald Trump. But he pointed out, it’s not percentages that win elections, but actual votes cast. Gonzalez asked, “Would you rather have 70% of 12 million votes, or would you rather have 68% of 20 million votes?”
The real surprise, Gonzalez noted, was in the increase of white suburbanites – and especially white suburban women – who voted for Donald Trump. If anything, that was the real “under-performance” calling for further analysis.
Why is it that Republicans are increasingly becoming America’s “White Party” with white women exhibiting decreasing difference in their voting preferences from white men who actually shifted a bit away from Trump? And why do so many Christians continue to support someone like DJT?
Gonzalez answer? There is a surprisingly significant number of Americans – white, black, Latinx, gay, straight, atheist and Christian – who are quite comfortable with Donald Trump’s imperialist message of “America First” global dominance. Whether they’re aware of it or not, they (at least subconsciously) don’t want the sun to set on the declining U.S. empire. So, they respond positively to imperialism’s conventional wisdom of maintaining “full spectrum dominance” over the rest of the world. It’s an American thing divorced from any “identity politics.”
Today’s Readings
I bring all of that up because today’s readings call attention to the difference between the conventional wisdom that Gonzalez decried and the radical wisdom of Jesus the Christ who had no time for empire or for making Rome or even Israel great again.
To show what I mean, here are my “translations” of the day’s selections related to Jesus’ profound wisdom – with a surprise twist in today’s Gospel parable of “The Wise and Foolish Virgins.”
There, the anonymous and conservatively Jewish evangelist called “Matthew” turns the unconventionally wise Jesus into a teacher of the world’s conventional wisdom of taking care of #1. In effect, he transforms Jesus from what we might call a “progressive” (or what I would call an anti-imperialist “radical”) into something like a contemporary Republican. No wonder today’s Christians feel comfortable supporting Donald Trump!
Please read to original texts here to see if I’m exaggerating. The first three readings reflect Jesus’ approach to wisdom. The last one seems to contradict it.
Wisdom 6: 12-16
Goddess-like Wisdom is easily encountered by those who seek her out. In fact, she lovingly looks for us even before we start our search for her. She is nearer to us than our jugular veins. Honoring her is actually the height of informed intelligence. You might say that human beings are naturally wise.
Psalms 63: 3-8
Whether we know it or not, wisdom is our shared quest. It’s more valuable than life itself. Without wisdom our lives are parched, meaningless and deprived. Wisdom’s nourishment brings us gladness and everlasting joy.
I Thessalonians 4: 13-18
But what about those who die before achieving the full enlightenment offered by wisdom’s goddess? Have their lives been wasted? “No,” says St. Paul. Mysteriously, even they will be enlightened by the same cosmologically irresistible powers that were manifested in the person, life and teachings of the master of wisdom, Jesus the Christ. This is no idle fantasy, though the hopeless claim it is.
Matthew 25: 1-13
Even the evangelist called Matthew found Jesus’ unconventional wisdom about sharing to be a bit much. So, in his version of Jesus’ parable about the wise and the foolish bridesmaids,” he turned Jesus into a teacher of a conventional wisdom that the world could more easily endorse. “Take care of yourself first,” he has Jesus teach in his story. “Your selfishness will be rewarded,” Jesus seems to say. ‘Foolish people – especially thoughtless women – will be shut out of God’s kingdom, just as they deserve.”
Jesus Republicanized
Let me say a bit more about the parable that tries to domesticate Jesus. It’s about those who embody the characteristics of wisdom described in the first reading – the wise virgins. It is also about those who lack such qualities – the foolish bridesmaids. The wise ones brought enough oil to keep their lamps alight while they waited to escort an unexpectedly delayed bridegroom to his ritual rendezvous with his intended. The foolish ones made no such provision.
Obviously, this is a women-oriented story. And that’s quite fitting for exploring the topic of wisdom traditionally identified as feminine – almost as a goddess. The story is full of wisdom symbols: not only wise and foolish virgins, but wedding feasts and bridegrooms, sleeping and waking, lamps, oil and light, closed and locked doors. All of these are archetypes. Their richness suggests an enlightened storyteller; it suggests someone like Jesus.
And yet there are also elements in today’s gospel that suggest a voice that does not belong to the prophet from Nazareth. For one thing, this is perhaps the only instance in the gospels where women are presented in a negative light. Here I’m thinking of the foolish bridesmaids. Throughout the Gospels, women appear consistently in a positive light. It seems Jesus took care not to reinforce the prejudice against them that so endemic to his deeply patriarchal culture – and to our own.
For another, this parable doesn’t contain any of the reversals or “unconventional wisdom” that we’ve come to associate with Jesus’ teachings and method of story-telling. Parables, you’ll recall, are stories which present a problem meant to engage their audiences. They do so by addressing a real-life concern (often expressed in a question presented by one of Jesus’ opponents). Typically, Jesus’ answer turns the tables on the questioner surprising him with some version of Jesus’ great dictum: “The first will be last and the last first.” Think of the “Good Samaritan” or the “Prodigal Son.” We don’t find any of those kind of surprises in the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.
On the contrary, instead of unconventional wisdom and surprising reversals, we find that this story concludes with a highly conventional moral. It’s embodied in the strange refusal of the wise virgins to share their oil with the foolish ones. Again, the lesson seems to be “Be prepared and take care of #1. Let the improvident take care of themselves and reap the consequences of their ‘foolishness’.”
Of course, that runs counter to a theme that earliest Gospel traditions firmly centralize, namely that of sharing even in the face of scarcity. As you recall, that motif appeared in the feeding of the 5000 in Mk. 6:30-44 and in the feeding of the 4000 in 8:1-10. Both instances embodied a “miracle enough” made possible because Jesus inspired people to overcome selfishness and share the little they had. The surprise was that in sharing scarce resources (five loaves and two fishes) there was more than enough for all.
The bottom line here is that Matthew seems to have domesticated Jesus – as I said, making him very Republican-like.
Conclusion
Last week in OpEdNews, RJ Piers wrote an extremely insightful article called “Letting Go of Christianity During the Trump Era.” There the author recalled years of commitment to a Christian faith that required faithful observance of conventional morality centered around avoidance of drinking, drugs and premarital sex.
In the light of his abstinence, the author found it more than disappointing to see Christians rallying around a character like Donald Trump with his three marriages, assaults on unsuspecting women, and separations of children and babies from their mothers and fathers. For Piers (as for so many of us), Christian faith was all about conventional morality. And to see Christians deserting that morality to endorse someone like Trump was enough to suggest his own abandonment of Christian faith itself.
Personally, I found the argument intriguing.
However, even a casual reading of the Gospels reveals that Jesus was not about such conventional expectations. His focus wasn’t drinking, drugs, or premarital sex. On the contrary, he transgressed community moral standards at every turn. He repeatedly broke the sacred Sabbath law, forgave a woman caught in flagrante with an anonymous man, was accused of being a drunkard and friend of prostitutes, intermingled with despised foreigners, heretics, and n’er do wells. He finished his own life completely disgraced on death row, a victim of torture and of a form of capital punishment specifically reserved for enemies of Roman imperialism.
Remembering all of that is important not only for helping us see how churches have followed Matthew’s lead in domesticating Jesus. It also helps us see Jesus for who he was despite that process of normalization that began less than two generations after his assassination.
Matthew’s parable of the ten bridesmaids is a case in point. Ironically, its domestication of the radical Jesus juxtaposed with the rest of today’s readings calls us to return to the master’s unconventional wisdom. That wisdom rejects obsession with conventional morality.
Again ironically, Matthew’s attempts at taming Jesus remind us of the master’s more important focus. As shown by his crucifixion, it must have been on politically radical rebellion against the kind of imperialism that Juan Gonzalez correctly suggests has seduced so many of our fellow citizens despite their claims to be followers of Jesus the Christ.
Recently, I spent two weeks in Tijuana working with Al Otro Lado (AOL). I’ve written about that experience here, here, and here.
AOL is a legal defense service for refugees seeking asylum mostly from gang-rule in Mexico and Central America. The emigrants want escape from countries whose police forces and allied power holders are controlled by ruthless drug rings whose only goal is accumulation of money and social dominance.
As I did my work helping clients fill out endless forms concocted by those who would illegally exclude them, everything seemed so hopeless. I wondered how those gangs achieved such power? Isn’t it a shame, I thought, that entire countries are now controlled by criminal mobs with names like “MS 13,” “Nueva Generacion,” and “18?” How sad for these people!
Then, during my flight home to Connecticut, I happened to watch the documentary “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” (WMRC). It introduced viewers to the dark and criminal mentor of Donald Trump.
On its face, the film illustrated the absolute corruption of the U.S. government as the unwavering servant of the elite as the only people who count. But in the light of my experience in Tijuana, it made me realize that our country too is literally controlled by shadowy gangs to an extent even worse than what’s happening south of our border. I mean, the United States of America now has the most prominent protege of Roy Cohn, an unabashed mafioso, actually sitting in the Oval Office! Both Cohn and, of course, his disciple turn out to be absolute nihilists without principle or any regard for truth.
The film made clear how both men tapped into a similar nihilist strain within huge numbers of Americans who identify with the Republican Party and ironically with the Catholic faith and Christian fundamentalism. Nonetheless, WMRC wasn’t explicit enough in probing either Cohn’s corruption, that of Donald Trump or of our reigning system’s complex of government, education, church and mainstream media.
It failed to show how the phenomena of Roy Cohn and Donald Trump represent mere surface indications of a profoundly anti-democratic coup d’état that has gradually unfolded in our country over the last 40 years. The actuality of this takeover was revealed most clearly in the recent impeachment proceedings. They provided a kind of last straw undeniably exhibiting how nihilist “Christians” have seized power in perhaps irreversible ways.
The Film
To see what I mean, begin by watching “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” for yourself. It not only details Cohn’s life as an infamous New York mafia consigliere. It also shows how he started his career in crime as the 23-year-old advisor of the equally villainous Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. (McCarthy, of course was the force behind the nation-wide communist scare of the early 1950s.)
However, most importantly WMRC describes the film’s subject as the mentor of Donald Trump. By both their admissions, each recognized in the other a kindred spirit. Each used mafia and friends in high places (from Ronald Reagan to New York’s Cardinal Spellman) to enrich himself in terms of power and money. In the end, the alliance brought Trump to “the highest office in the land.”
To that point, here’s the way the film’s (highly accurate) preview-teaser reads: “Roy Cohn, a ruthless and unscrupulous lawyer and political power broker, found his 28-year career ranged from acting as chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist-hunting subcommittee to molding the career of a young Queens real estate developer named Donald Trump.”
In the course of the film, witnesses testify that Cohn taught Trump his basic approach to life. To wit: here are Cohn’s (and by extension, Donald Trump’s) implicit Ten Commandments. They also summarize the guiding principles of perhaps the majority of the most prominent politicians in the U.S. and across the world:
Value money as the highest good.
Manipulate the law to enhance personal wealth and privilege
Put your own interests above everyone else’s
Bully opponents mercilessly
Wrap yourself in the flag while you do so
Never admit wrong-doing or failure
When accused change the subject and make vigorous counteraccusation
Lie unceasingly with great confidence and bluster
Declare even the worst defeat a victory
Win at all costs
All of that was actually Cohn’s personal ethos. It worked for him throughout his life. It is reaping at least short-term benefits for Donald Trump as well. In fact, with Cohn as his mentor and as the man’s protege, Donald Trump would seem to merit all the adjectives on the film’s cover envelope: ruthless, unscrupulous, powerful, flamboyant, notorious, despicable . . .
Deeper Corruption
Unmentioned however in the film is Cohn’s connection with the very way our country (and the world) is run. It’s largely a blackmail game connected not merely with money and power, but with sex, pedophilia, blackmail and complete disregard for truth or moral principle. In fact, Whitney Webb’s four-part study of pedophile-racketeer, Jeffrey Epstein is called just that: “Government by Blackmail.”
And right at its heart, we find Trump mentor, Roy Cohn, listed prominently among figures like the Mafia kingpin Myer Lansky, and Lew Rosenstiel (of Schenley distilleries). For decades following World War II, they were real powers behind mayors, governors, congressmen, senators, presidents, and (yes) behind the world’s remaining kings and potentates, along with assorted church officials.
In fact, according to Webb, all during the ’70s and ’80s, Rosenstiel, Lansky’s close friend, regularly threw what his fourth wife (of five) called “blackmail parties.” The photos and recordings gathered there long kept Lansky out of trouble from the federal government. They also delivered entire cities to Mafia control in the post WWII era. In the end, Lansky blackmailed numerous top politicians, army officers, diplomats and police officials. He had photos of FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover in drag and performing homosexual acts.
Again, according to Webb’s research, Rosenstiel’s protegee and successor as blackmailer-in-chief was Roy Cohn himself who was closely associated with the Mafia bosses referenced prominently in “Where’s My Roy Cohn,” as well as with J. Edgar Hoover and the Reagan White House. (Nancy Reagan even phoned Cohn to thank him for enabling the election of her husband.)
Simultaneously, Cohn took on the central role in the blackmail pedophile hustle Lansky and Rosenstiel had started. As usual, its main targets were politicians often interacting with child “prostitutes.”
That was the real source of Cohn’s power. So were his dear friends in high places including (besides Clinton, the Reagans and Trump) Barbara Walters, Rupert Murdoch, Alan Dershowitz, Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein, Chuck Schumer, William Safire, William Buckley, William Casey, and top figures in the Catholic Church.
It’s those latter figures that connect Cohn’s pedophile ring as inherited by Jeffery Epstein even with the Church’s child abuse scandal. It directly involved the aforementioned “American pope,” Francis Cardinal “Mary” Spellman of New York, and Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Teddy” McCarrick of Washington D.C. Father Bruce Ritter’s Covenant House (a multi-million-dollar charity for homeless and run-away boys and girls) was also deeply implicated. In fact, when Ritter’s involvement in sex acts with his underage wards came to light, it was secular powers more than ecclesiastical forces that rallied to his defense.
Right-Wing Coup and Presidential Impeachment
All of that leads me back to where I started – to the right-wing coup d’état whose final straw debunked any pretense of democracy that may have been persuasive to some before impeachment proceedings put them completely to rest. “Where’s My Roy Cohn” showed the profound extent of the take-over in question – never far distanced from predominantly male sexual perversion.
Yes, we all know about such depravity within the Catholic Church – all the way up the chain of command. But the Cohn film along with the ancillary Epstein revelations it ignores reveal the centrality of that debauchery to standard operating procedure among government officials in the United States and across the world. It’s evidently what they do.
Am I exaggerating? Go back to the above list of Cohn’s and Epstein’s “friends.” See for yourself: they include presidents, princes, prelates, professors, pundits, pushers, and publishers. All of them have always had a lot to fear from the tapes and videos made by Cohn. But the same holds true for the ones confiscated from Epstein’s special safe, and from the still unpublished manifestoes of passengers on Epstein’s “Lolita Express” to the man’s “Orgy Island.” Additionally, there’s remains a lot to learn from the testimony of Epstein’s procurer, Ghislaine Maxwell. Inexplicably the latter remains at large and allegedly unlocatable by international agencies possessing the world’s most sophisticated technology.
In other words, what we know about connections between Cohn, Epstein, the Mafia, CIA, DOJ, White House, and church officials represent the mere tip of an iceberg whose continued submersion seems assiduously assured by the agencies involved, by Britain’s royals, and other powerful entities — all aided and abetted by an entirely cooperative MSM.
[And no: it’s not baseless “conspiracy reasoning” to implicate the deep state officials just mentioned – not in the face of Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious “suicide” whose suspicious circumstances (within a specifically federal prison) include transgression of standard protocols for prisoners on suicide watch, missing surveillance tapes, sleeping guards, unexplained screams reported by fellow inmates as coming from Epstein’s cell, and lack of follow-up by the MSM.]
In other words, it’s not just that our country has been taken over by right-wing mobsters. No, it’s much more than that: our very world is run by gangsters, pedophiles, blackmailers, and their enablers – with Donald Trump its most recent and blatant evidentiary manifestation of anti-democratic policies.
Ignoring the rest of the world for a moment, consider what we’ve learned from the impeachment process about the extent of America’s de facto coup under Donald Trump whose criminal actions have gutted the Constitution of the United States at its core. Thus:
There no longer remains a separation of powers.
An indicted executive can control his own trial.
Subpoenas mean nothing to the reigning executive. By his decree alone, he can override summonses, forbidding those receiving them from appearing in court.
Impeachment “jurors” can embrace unmitigated bias with impunity announcing their judgment well before the trial’s commencement.
The presiding judge – even as he acknowledges the appearance of his court’s politicization – can with straight face permit a “trial” without evidence or witnesses.
Thus, prosecutors (i.e. the very House of Representatives) are left entirely impotent.
The hell of it is that these are all merely the latest developments in a criminal, unconstitutional, and anti-democratic process that has been in motion for nearly half a century. It has attacked the very pillars of democracy including the Supreme Court, Public Education, the mainstream media (MSM), and the Catholic Church – not to mention the Christian fundamentalists who constitute the heart of the Republican Party. It’s no wonder that Noam Chomsky has identified the latter as the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.
To be more specific, its “Christian” base hold firmly to tenets like the following that can only be described as “Cohnistic,” Trumpian, nihilistic, or (in religious terms) heretical:
There are no basic ethical principles (except that abortion is immoral).
Human life has no value except in its fetal stages.
The concept of truth is completely meaningless. This is because the public’s attention span and memory are so limited that repeated deceits make no lasting impression and will soon be forgotten.
The U.S. Constitution (except for the Second Amendment) is entirely insignificant.
There are two sets of laws, one for the elite and another for the rest of us.
As legal persons, corporations have more rights than living human beings.
International law applies only to U.S. enemies, never to the United States or its allies.
While the United States has the right to assassinate, bomb, drone, invade and occupy wherever it wishes, defense or retaliation against such aggression is criminal and liable to maximum punishment.
Conclusion
Do you see what I mean in describing our situation here in “America” as worse than our neighbors to the south?
It’s a truism to observe that whatever imperial governments – from Rome to Great Britain to our own – do abroad eventually returns to haunt them at home. My experience in Tijuana coupled with watching “Where’s My Roy Cohn” underlined the veracity of that terrible axiom. It all made me realize that our government has been taken over by cynical nihilists – and more than that by mobsters, pedophiles, blackmailers and heretical religious fanatics.
So, my take-away from border work in Tijuana is not only dismay, sadness, and despair for refugees at or border. It’s the same sentiments for ourselves.
With elections on the horizon, it’s also the question, what are we going to do about it? We have to determine which available candidate is freest from the sick contagion I’ve just described.
Readings for Second Sunday of Advent: IS 11: 1-10; PS 72: 1-2, 7-8, 12-13; ROM 15: 4-9; MT 3: 1-12
“The meaning of the Incarnation is this: In Jesus Christ, God hits the streets. And preparing for that is the meaning of Advent.” (Jim Wallis. “Advent in 2016: Not Normal, Not Now, Not to Come.”)
__________
Three years ago I published a review of James Patterson’s novel, Woman of God. It continues to get clicks – perhaps more than anything I’ve published on my blog. I think that’s because so many of us find ourselves searching for a richer, more relevant church experience that connects with the extraordinarily dangerous times we’re living in. They have in fact been shaped by “the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.”
Woman of God is the story of Brigid Fitzgerald, a medical doctor who though female, becomes a priest and candidate for the papacy.
Brigid and her husband (also a dissident priest) decide to form their own Catholic parish. They do so because of the studied irrelevance of the Catholic Church to pressing problems of the real world. The two call their congregation the “Jesus, Mary and Joseph (JMJ) Church.” They insist on remaining Catholics not allowing their opponents to drum them out of the church as just another break-away Protestant sect.
The JMJ Church spreads rapidly, largely because it connects Jesus’ Gospel with issues of peace and social justice. And though vilified by her local bishop and physically threatened by right wing Catholics, Brigid eventually becomes widely celebrated and is summoned to Rome not for condemnation, but papal approval.
I couldn’t help thinking of Woman of God as I read today’s liturgy of the word this Second Sunday of Advent. Like the JMJ Church, the first two readings along with the responsorial psalm emphasize the connection between faith and social justice.
Then in today’s Gospel, the prophet, John the Baptist, like Brigid Fitzgerald, initiates an alternative community of faith far from the temple in the desert wilderness. John’s credibility leads “all Jerusalem and Judea” to see him as a prophet. In fact, (as John Dominic Crossan has pointed out) John becomes for the Jewish grassroots their de facto alternative “High Priest.”
To see what I mean, consider that first selection from the prophet Isaiah. It directly links faith with justice for the poor, oppressed and marginalized. In Isaiah’s day (like our own) they were typically ignored. By way of contrast, Isaiah’s concept of justice consists precisely in judging the poor and oppressed fairly and not according to anti-poor prejudice – in Isaiah’s words, not by “appearance or hearsay.” (A clearer statement against contemporary police and/or government profiling can hardly be imagined.)
Not only that, but according to the prophet, treating the poor justly is the key to peace between humans and with nature. Centralizing their needs rather than those of the rich produces a utopian wonderland where all of us live in complete harmony with nature and with other human beings. In Isaiah’s poetic reality, lions, lambs, and calves play together. Leopards and goats, cows and bears, little babies and deadly snakes experience no threat from each other. (This is the prophetic vision of the relationship between humans and nature – not exploitation and destruction, but harmony and mutual respect.)
Most surprising of all, even believers (Jews) and non-believers (gentiles) are at peace. Today’s excerpt from Paul’s Letter to the Romans seconds this point. He tells his correspondents to “welcome one another” – including gentiles – i.e. those the Jewish community normally considered enemies. (That would be like telling us today to welcome Muslims as brothers and sisters whom God loves as much as any of us.)
Today’s responsorial psalm reinforces the idea of peace flowing from justice meted out to the “least.” As Psalm 72 was sung, we all responded, “Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace forever.” And again, the justice in question has the poor as its object. The psalmist praises a God and a government (king) who “rescue the poor and afflicted when they cry out” – who “save the lives of the poor.”
In his own time, the lack of the justice celebrated in today’s first three readings infuriates Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. His disgust forces him out of the temple and into the desert. It has him excoriating the religious leaders of his day as a “brood of vipers.”
Unmistakably clothed as a prophet – in garments that absolutely repudiate the “sacred garb” of his effete opponents – John lambasts the Scribal Establishment which had normalized relationships with the brutal occupation forces of Rome. As opposition high priest, John promises a religious renewal that will lead to a new Exodus – this time from the power of Rome and its religious collaborators.
I hope you can see as I do the parallels between the context of John’s preaching and our own. We live in a culture where those in charge contravene our faith by openly slandering the poor and marginalized celebrated in today’s readings as especially dear to God.
I mean, following the elections of 2016, all the levers of power (the presidency, the Supreme Court, the House and Senate) found themselves in the hands of billionaires and their friends – the 1% that the Occupy Movement identified so accurately eight years ago. Ironically that richest 1% has succeeded in scapegoating the country’s poorest 1% (immigrants) as a major cause of our country’s problems. Moreover, they equally vilify other poor and marginalized people: the impoverished in general, brown and black-skinned people, women, the LGBTQ community, environmentalists, protestors and anyone who exposes the crimes of the billionaire class.
As a result, we entered a period of unprecedented national darkness that still promises to rival that of Germany, 1933-1945. Until the mid-term elections of last year, virtually everything was controlled by the single organization Noam Chomsky calls “the most dangerous in the history of the world.”
More dangerous than the Nazis? Yes, Chomsky insists. Hitler did not have the power to destroy the planet by nuclear war. Hitler ruled Germany before climate change threatened innumerable species, Mother Earth herself, and continued human existence. And yet the entire Republican Party denies that the problem even exists! Yes, it is the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.
And despite all of that, there’s not a peep about it from the pulpit. People keep going to Mass as though the most important upcoming event is the arrival of St. Nicholas at the parish potluck – or the Christmas bazaar.
So, what should we do in the face of such disconnect?
How about following the example of John the Baptist, Brigid Fitzgerald and her husband?
This would entail:
Admitting that present forms of church are hopelessly disconnected from the unprecedented tragedy and threat represented by the accession to power of anti-poor climate change deniers.
Publicly moving out of our local church building.
Perhaps, opening a store front JMJ Catholic church on the Main Street Jim Wallis referred to in his article referenced above.
Empowering faithful women in the JMJ community to preach and celebrate the Eucharist.
Objectors will say:
We have no authority to do this.
It’s better to continue our reform efforts from within.
This will only cause division in our church.
The status quo really doesn’t bother me, because I use the quiet provided by Sunday Mass to facilitate my own prayer life.
(If, like me, you’re of a certain age) I’m too old for such radical disruption of my life.
To such objections John the Baptist might reply:
“I had no official authority to start my desert community of resistance and reform. In fact, I was identified by the authorities as an enemy of the state. Eventually they cut off my head. So don’t expect approval.”
Reform from within? “I gave up on that early on. So did my cousin, Jesus. Both of us operated outside the temple system which we criticized harshly.”
Division in our faith communities? “That didn’t bother me either. Can you get much more divisive or polarizing than calling religious leaders a ‘brood of vipers’?”
Withdrawing into personal prayer? “The spiritual masters in my Essene community convinced me that prayer and meditation are essential elements undergirding prophetic action. However, pietism is useless unless it leads to the kind of witness I gave and risk I took on the banks of the Jordan.”
Too old? “Again, my Essene mysticism would not permit me to identify with the physical as if I were primarily a body with a soul. The truth is that we are first of all ageless spirits who happen to inhabit temporary bodies. The imperative for action is no less incumbent on older people than on the young. Hell, the elders criticized me for being too young to oppose them. I was barely 30 when they killed me.”
As Jim Wallis has intimated, the specter of John the Baptist should haunt us this second Sunday of Advent and drive our faith communities onto Main Street. These unprecedented times call for radical response outside the sacred precincts and independent of the sleepwalkers awaiting the arrival of St. Nicholas.
Readings for Palm Sunday: LK 19:28-40; IS 50: 4-7, PS 22: 8-9, 12-20, 23=24, PHIL 2:6-11, LK 22: 14-23:58.
It’s puzzling to see white Evangelicals rallying around Donald Trump. He’s the one who owns casinos and strip clubs, who has been married three times and brags about sexually assaulting women.
How is it possible for white evangelicals to support such a person whose policies favor the rich and punish the poor, who despises immigrants, advocates torture, and whose appetite for profit seems insatiable.
After all, Jesus was a poor laborer who criticized the rich in the harshest of terms. He and his family knew what it was like to be unwelcome immigrants (in Egypt). He himself was a victim of torture, not its administrator. Far from a champion of empire, he was executed as a terrorist and enemy of Rome. His followers were not about accumulating wealth but shared what they had according to ability and need.
When you think of it, all of this seems antithetical to not only to Trumpism, but to the declared positions of virtually the entire Republican Party. They’re all imperialists. All of them are friends of the one-percent. They all want to increase military spending — apparently without question or limit.
How did
all of that happen?
Today’s
Palm Sunday readings provide some clues. Luke’s Passion Narratives reveal a
first century Christian community already depoliticizing Jesus in order to
please Roman imperialists. The stories turn Jesus against his own people as
though they were foreign enemies of God.
Think
about the context of today’s Palm Sunday readings.
Note
that Jesus and his audiences were first and foremost anti-imperialist Jews
whose lives were shaped more than anything else by the Roman occupation of
their homeland. As such, they weren’t waiting for a Roman-Greco “messiah” who,
like the Sun God Mithra, would die and lead them to heaven. They were awaiting
a Davidic messiah who would liberate them from the Romans.
So, on
this Palm Sunday, what do you think was on the minds of the crowds who Luke
tells us lined the streets of Jerusalem to acclaim Jesus the Nazarene? Were
they shouting “Hosanna! Hosanna!” (Save us! Save us!) because they thought
Jesus was about to die and by his sacrificial death open the gates of heaven
closed since Adam’s sin by a petulant God? Of course not. They were shouting
for Jesus to save them from the Romans.
The
palm branches in their hands were (since the time of the Maccabees) the symbols
of resistance to empire. Those acclaiming Jesus looked to him to play a key
role in the Great Rebellion everyone knew about to take place against the hated
Roman occupiers.
And
what do you suppose was on Jesus’ mind? He was probably intending to take part
in the rebellion just mentioned. It had been plotted by the Jews’ Zealot
insurgency. Jesus words at the “Last Supper” show his anticipation that the
events planned for Jerusalem might cause God’s Kingdom to dawn that very
weekend.
Clearly
Jesus had his differences with the Zealots. They were nationalists; he was
inter-nationalist who was open to gentiles. The Zealots were violent; Jesus was
not.
And yet the Zealots and Jesus came together on their abhorrence of Roman presence in the Holy Land. They found common ground on the issues of debt forgiveness, non-payment of taxes to the occupiers, and of land reform. Within Jesus’ inner circle there was at least one Zealot (Simon). Indications might also implicate Peter, Judas, James, and John. And Jesus’ friends were armed when he was arrested. Whoever cut off the right ear of the high priest’s servant was used to wielding a sword – perhaps as a “sicarius” (the violent wing of the Zealots who specialized in knifing Jews collaborating with the Romans).
But
we’re getting ahead of our story. . . Following his triumphant entry into
Jerusalem, Jesus soon found himself and his disciples inside the temple
participating in what we’d call a “direct action” protest. They were
demonstrating against the collaborative role the temple and its priesthood were
fulfilling on behalf of the Romans.
As collaborators, the
temple priests were serving a foreign god (the Roman emperor) within the temple
precincts. For Jesus that delegitimized the entire system. So, as John Dominic Crossan puts it, Jesus’ direct action was
not so much a “cleansing” of the temple as the symbolic destruction of an
institution that had completely lost its way.
It was
this demonstration that represented the immediate cause of Jesus’ arrest and
execution described so poignantly in today’s long gospel reading.
Following
the temple demonstration, Jesus and his disciples became “wanted” men (Lk.
19:47). At first Jesus’ popularity affords him protection from the authorities
(19:47-48). The people constantly surround him eager to hear Jesus’ words
denouncing their treasonous “leaders” (20:9-19), about the issue of Roman
taxation (20:20-25), the destruction of the temple (21:1-6), the coming war
(21:20-24) and the imminence of God’s Kingdom (21:29-33).
Eventually
however, Jesus has to go underground. On Passover eve he sends out Peter and
John to arrange for a safe-house to celebrate the feast I mentioned earlier.
The two disciples are to locate the “upper room.” They do so by exchanging a
set of secret signs and passwords with a local comrade.
Then
comes Jesus’ arrest. Judas has betrayed Jesus to collect the reward on Jesus’
head – 30 pieces of silver. The arrest is followed by a series of “trials”
before the Jewish Council (the Sanhedrin), before Pilate and Herod. Eventually,
Jesus is brought back to Pilate. There he’s tortured, condemned and executed
between two other insurgents.
Note that Luke presents Pilate in way completely at odds with what we know of the procurator as described for example by the Jewish historian Josephus. After the presentation of clear-cut evidence that the Nazarene rabbi was “stirring up the people,” and despite Jesus’ own admission to crimes against the state (claiming to be a rival king), Pilate insists three times that the carpenter is innocent of capital crime.
Such tolerance
of rebellion contradicts Crossan’s insistence that Pilate had standing orders
to execute anyone associated with lower class rebellion during the extremely
volatile Passover festivities. In other words, there would have been no
drawn-out trial.
What’s
going on here? Two things.
First
of all, like everyone else, Luke knew that Jesus had been crucified by the
Romans. That was an inconvenient truth for Luke’s audience which around the
year 85 CE (when Luke wrote) was desperately trying to reconcile with the Roman
Empire which lumped the emerging Christian community with the Jews whom the
Romans despised.
Luke’s
account represents an attempt to create distance between Christians and Jews.
So, he makes up an account that exonerates Pilate (and the Romans) from guilt
for Jesus’ execution. Simultaneously, he lays the burden of blame for Jesus’
execution at the doorstep of Jewish authorities.
In this
way, Luke made overtures of friendship towards Rome. He wasn’t worried about
the Jews, since by the year 70 the Romans had destroyed Jerusalem and its
temple along with more than a million of its inhabitants. After 70 Jewish
Christians no longer represented the important factor they once were. Their
leadership had been decapitated with the destruction of Jerusalem.
Relatedly,
Jesus’ crucifixion would have meant that Rome perceived him as a rebel against
the Empire. Luke is anxious to make the case that such perception was false.
Rome had nothing to fear from Christians.
I’m
suggesting that such assurance was unfaithful to the Jesus of history. It
domesticated the rebel who shines through even in Luke’s account when it is
viewed contextually.
And so
what?
Well,
if you wonder why Christians can support Donald Trump . . . if you wonder why
they so easily succumb to empires (Roman, Nazi, U.S.) you’ve got your answer.
It all starts here – in the gospels themselves – with the great cover-up of the
insurgent Jesus.
And if
you wonder where the West’s and Hitler’s comfort with xenophobia in general and
anti-Semitism in particular come from, you have that answer as well.
The
point here is that only by recovering the obscured rebel Jesus can Christians
avoid the mistake they made 80 years ago. Then instead of singing “Hosanna” to
Jesus, they shouted “Heil Hitler!” to another imperialist torturer, xenophobe,
and hypocrite.
The
readings for Palm Sunday present us with a cautionary tale about these sad
realities.
I recently came across a powerful but profoundly misleading video about climate change. In the name of progressiveness, compassion and love, it waves a white flag before anthropogenic climate change and invites its viewers to blissfully coast through to their inevitable evolutionary demise.
The film’s resigned surrender contrasts sharply with the more hopeful, clear-eyed vision of Pope Francis and the faith-inspired program he suggests in his all-but-ignored eco-encyclical, Laudato Si’.
The stark difference between the two approaches illustrates the impotence of the secularized left before the world’s most pressing problems. It also shows the potential power of Francis’ faith perspective, which progressives ignore at their own (and the planet’s) peril.
First of all, consider the film in question. The eight-minute piece is called “Edge of Extinction.” It was produced and narrated by Guy McPherson, an evolutionary biologist whose webpage slogan is “Nature bats last. Passionately pursue a life of excellence.”
McPherson’s thesis is that “humanity is behaving exactly in accordance with its evolved genetic imperatives to survive, thrive and multiply today, regardless of the consequences tomorrow.”
In other words, humanity is like other animal species. Its evolutionary short-sightedness has it rushing headlong towards its own inevitable extinction whose ultimate cause is “industrial civilization, the most violent set of living arrangements ever devised.”
According to McPherson, this preordained inevitability means that we should all set aside anger and bitterness about human-caused climate change, replacing such unproductive emotions with “compassion and tolerance” presumably for climate change deniers. This, in turn, will confer peace of mind and a resultant “general happiness” as we glide towards extinction which, Mr. McPherson says will occur in 2025.
None of this is to say that it will be easy, the film continues. We’ll witness the cataclysmic death of 7.5 million people. We’ll run out of food, water, and fuel. The soil will become completely unproductive. The world’s abandoned nuclear facilities will melt down catastrophically. Hospitals will be shuttered; disease will run rampant. There will be no first responders to rescue us. Many will commit suicide. Others will be murdered by the last remnants of the privileged still hanging on to their dwindling resources in their sweltering radiated bunkers.
Is that pessimistic enough for you?
It needn’t be for three reasons: First of all, “humanity” has not actually made the decision in question. Secondly, as signaled by Pope Francis, there are clear alternatives. Third, while climate change deniers might deserve our compassion, they emphatically do not merit tolerance.
To begin with, “humanity” has certainly not decided “to survive, thrive and multiply today, regardless of the consequences tomorrow.” In fact, only a sliver of the human race has done so; the rest are in complete resistance.
The sliver in question is a small part of the planet’s richest 1% most of whom happen to live in the United States whose population comprises only 5% of the world’s inhabitants. To put a finer point on it: the criminals in question have coalesced in the United States and in the Republican Party, identified by Noam Chomsky as the most dangerous organization in the history of the world. Republicans can be removed from office. (Remember that next November!)
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has other ideas as signaled in the nascent reforms of the Paris Climate Accord endorsed by nearly everyone in the world excluding the Republican leadership. Moreover, polls show that 61% of Americans—including 43 percent of Republicans—say climate change is a problem the government needs to tackle.
Secondly, there are simple, common-sense alternatives to the looming catastrophe. They have been outlined most compellingly by Pope Francis in Laudato Si’ (LS). They include on the one hand, acts on the parts of individuals such as “avoiding the use of plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, separating refuse, cooking only what can reasonably be consumed, showing care for other living beings, using public transport or carpooling, planting trees, turning off unnecessary lights. . .” as well as reducing the use of air conditioning (LS 55, 212).
On the other hand, Francis says that dealing with climate chaos requires action which national governments alone are capable of performing (38, 129). These include weening national populations from dependence on fossil fuels (165) as well as investment in high-speed railways, and renewable energy sources. National governments must also strictly regulate transnational corporate activity (38).
According to Laudato Si’, changing paradigms additionally includes the submission of national governments to an international body with legislative authority to protect rainforests, oceans and endangered species, as well as to promote sustainable agriculture (53, 173, 174, 175). (BTW, the U.S. already submits to international legislative authorities such as, for instance, the World Trade Organization which has the power of overturning United States law.)
So, all of this is doable. And, as Francis insists, the Judeo-Christian tradition about stewardship and care for God’s creation can be invoked to persuade the 83% of Americans who identify themselves as Christian to save the planet.
Ironically, Republicans have effectively invoked the biblical tradition to support their ecocide. Few on the left have followed Pope Francis in the opposite direction. Progressive church leaders need to make climate change the absolute center of their ministries. 2025 is fast approaching.
Finally, like other criminals, Donald Trump and his Republican cohorts in the Congress certainly deserve our compassion. Perhaps, they’ve been corrupted by gilded childhoods, limited experience of the life’s hardships, and by an overriding love of money, profit, pleasure, power, and prestige.
But no matter how sorry we might feel for them, we must recognize that they are criminals. This sliver of 1% have taken it upon themselves to condemn all of us, our children and grandchildren to the fate so accurately described in “The Edge of Extinction.”
We cannot allow them to do that. Citizens’ arrests are in order, not to mention non-violent revolution – stimulated by recognition of shared humanity and even faith.
That’s the path Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ suggests.
Readings for Pentecost Sunday: ACTS 2:1-11; PS 104: 1, 24, 29,-31, 34; I COR 12: 3B-7, 12-13; JN 20: 19-23.
We all saw it last Thursday, didn’t we?
A rich white septuagenarian president stood (ironically) in a garden before a crowd of other rich white old men. He bravely announced a decision whose negative repercussions will be mostly felt after all of them are dead. What courage!
“We’re withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord,” the speaker fearlessly proclaimed. “We’re putting ourselves first! It’s the American way! It’s the capitalist way! America first! America first!”
The old men in the audience wildly applauded the ignorant dolt at the lectern who probably can’t remember the last time he cracked a book. And why not? They’re just uninformed dolts themselves. And yet, they have to gall to contradict the near-unanimous conclusions of the smartest people on the planet.
Can you spell “arrogance?” Can you smell it? Or maybe you can hear it. It sounds like this: ”U.S.A! U.S.A.! We’re putting ourselves first! We’re making America great again!”
None of them seem to care, do they? As I said, they won’t bear the brunt of their egotistical stupidity – of their ecological terrorism. Instead, their children and grandchildren will be stuck with the unpayable tab. And so will ours. Our children and the grandkids we know and love will be the ones whose lives will be immiserated by these fools.
“But Who cares about them?” the rich old white men say by their actions. “To hell with children everywhere. To hell with the planet for that matter. We’ll be long dead when the hurricanes blow, the heatwaves desiccate, and the forest fires rage. We’ll be gone when the waves of refugees swarm the globe in search of water, food, and shelter after the rising seas have destroyed their homes and livelihoods. Good luck with all that, kids! We don’t care about you. We care about what’s really important: MONEY! Can’t get enough of it!”
No wonder Noam Chomsky calls this rogue group of Christian terrorists (the Republican Party) “the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.”
Yes, that’s what Chomsky said. That’s what I just said. Yes, be reminded, on this Pentecost Sunday that these people call themselves Christians, and they’re more dangerous than ISIS. Most of them, I suppose, have been baptized and confirmed. They believe they have received Jesus’ Holy Spirit. Evidently on this day of Pentecost, they hear that Spirit saying:
Before all else, be separate; be individuals; God is not everyone’s Parent – just yours.
There is no such thing as the common good; the earth belongs only to those who can pay for it – or fight wars to steal it.
Your country is an island specially blessed by God.
So put yourselves first just as Jesus did.
Despise foreigners just like the Master.
Ignore the suffering of others; that’s the Christian way.
And if they threaten you in any way, kill them just as Jesus killed his enemies.
And even if they don’t, (as a Great Woman once said) “Let them eat cake!”
It’s all so familiar. But, of course, such belief has nothing to do with Jesus or his Holy Spirit celebrated in Pentecost’s liturgy of the word. There the whole thing is about human unity, mutual responsibility and care for the most vulnerable.
Look at that first reading. It depicts the Holy Spirit as uniting people from across the globe. No “me first,” no “us first” here. The list of God’s children is long and diverse for a reason: Parthians and Medes and Elamites, Mesopotamians, Judeans, Cappadocians, and people from Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, Egypt, Libya, Cyrene and Rome, Jews and converts to Judaism, along with Cretans and Arabs. The list’s length means that everyone is included. Everyone (as the Responsorial Psalm puts it) is a beloved creature of the Great All-Parent. No one is dispensable in God’s eyes.
The reading from First Corinthians makes the same point. There Paul reminds his friends that they are all members of a single Body of Christ. That’s Paul’s favorite image. We are all one body, he said, made one by Jesus Spirit — whether we’re Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, woman or man. There’s no room for “Romans first” here – not even “Jews first.”
But then, today’s gospel reading reminds us that God does in fact play favorites. God has made a “preferential option” putting the welfare of some ahead of others. The preferred ones, Jesus indicates, are the very ones who will be most harmed by climate chaos. They are not the septuagenarians who usually end up running empires. Instead, they are empire’s wounded victims. That’s the meaning of the risen Christ’s showing his wounds to his apostles. He once again discloses himself as the tortured victim of capital punishment – as present in the planet’s most vulnerable. By showing his wounds, Jesus reinforced what he’s recorded as saying at the end of Matthew 25, “Whatever you do to the least in my family, you do to me.”
Could anything be more contradictory to what was said and celebrated last Thursday in the imperial Rose Garden? Could anything be further from “To hell with children; to hell with the planet, to hell with the poor who will be the first to suffer from climate change?”
On this Pentecost Sunday, every baptized and confirmed person should be outraged at the hypocrisy.
Readings for Second Sunday of Advent: IS 11: 1-10; PS 72: 1-2, 7-8, 12-13; ROM 15: 4-9; MT 3: 1-12
“The meaning of the Incarnation is this: In Jesus Christ, God hits the streets. And preparing for that is the meaning of Advent.” (Jim Wallis. “Advent in 2016: Not Normal, Not Now, Not to Come.”)
__________
A few days ago I published a review of James Patterson’s novel, Woman of God. It’s the story of Brigid Fitzgerald, a medical doctor who though female, becomes a priest and candidate for the papacy.
Brigid and her husband (also a dissident priest) decide to form their own Catholic parish. They do so because of the studied irrelevance of the Catholic Church to pressing problems of the real world. The two call their congregation the “Jesus, Mary and Joseph (JMJ) Church.” They insist on remaining Catholics not allowing their opponents to drum them out of the church as just another break-away Protestant sect.
The JMJ Church spreads rapidly, largely because it connects Jesus’ Gospel with issues of peace and social justice. And though vilified by her local bishop and physically threatened by right wing Catholics, Brigid eventually becomes widely celebrated and is summoned to Rome not for condemnation, but papal approval.
I couldn’t help thinking of Woman of God as I read today’s liturgy of the word this Second Sunday of Advent. Like the JMJ Church, the first two readings along with the responsorial psalm emphasize the connection between faith and social justice.
Then in today’s Gospel, the prophet, John the Baptist, like Brigid Fitzgerald, initiates an alternative community of faith far from the temple in the desert wilderness. John’s credibility leads “all Jerusalem and Judea” to see him as a prophet. In fact, (as John Dominic Crossan has pointed out) John becomes for the Jewish grassroots their de facto alternative “High Priest.”
To see what I mean, consider that first selection from the prophet Isaiah. It directly links faith with justice for the poor, oppressed and marginalized. In Isaiah’s day (like our own) they were typically ignored. By way of contrast, Isaiah’s concept of justice consists precisely in judging the poor and oppressed fairly and not according to anti-poor prejudice – in Isaiah’s words, not by “appearance or hearsay.” (A clearer statement against contemporary police and/or government profiling can hardly be imagined.)
Not only that, but according to the prophet, treating the poor justly is the key to peace between humans and with nature. Centralizing their needs rather than those of the rich produces a utopian wonderland where all of us live in complete harmony with nature and with other human beings. In Isaiah’s poetic reality, lions, lambs, and calves play together. Leopards and goats, cows and bears, little babies and deadly snakes experience no threat from each other. (This is the prophetic vision of the relationship between humans and nature – not exploitation and destruction, but harmony and mutual respect.)
Most surprising of all, even believers (Jews) and non-believers (gentiles) are at peace. Today’s excerpt from Paul’s Letter to the Romans seconds this point. He tells his correspondents to “welcome one another” – including gentiles – i.e. those the Jewish community normally considered enemies. (That would be like telling us today to welcome Muslims as brothers and sisters whom God loves as much as any of us.)
Today’s responsorial psalm reinforces the idea of peace flowing from justice meted out to the “least.” As Psalm 72 was sung, we all responded, “Justice shall flourish in his time, and fullness of peace forever.” And again, the justice in question has the poor as its object. The psalmist praises a God and a government (king) who “rescue the poor and afflicted when they cry out” – who “save the lives of the poor.”
In his own time, the lack of the justice celebrated in today’s first three readings infuriates Jesus’ cousin, John the Baptist. His disgust forces him out of the temple and into the desert. It has him excoriating the religious leaders of his day as a “brood of vipers.”
Unmistakably clothed as a prophet – in garments that absolutely repudiate the “sacred garb” of his effete opponents – John lambasts the Scribal Establishment which had normalized relationships with the brutal occupation forces of Rome. As opposition high priest, John promises a religious renewal that will lead to a new Exodus – this time from the power of Rome and its religious collaborators.
I hope you can see as I do the parallels between the context of John’s preaching and our own. We live in a culture where those in charge contravene our faith by openly slandering the poor and marginalized celebrated in today’s readings as especially dear to God. I mean since November 8th, all the levers of power (the presidency, the Supreme Court, the House and Senate) find themselves in the hands of billionaires and their friends – the 1% that the Occupy Movement identified so accurately five years ago. Ironically that richest 1% has succeeded in scapegoating the country’s poorest 1% (immigrants) as a major cause of our country’s problems. Moreover, they equally vilify other poor and marginalized people: the impoverished in general, brown and black-skinned people, women, the LGBTQ community, environmentalists, protestors and anyone who exposes the crimes of the billionaire class.
As a result, we are about to enter a period of unprecedented national darkness that promises to rival that of Germany, 1933-1945. For at least the next four years our country will be controlled by an organization Noam Chomsky calls “the most dangerous in the history of the world.”
More dangerous than the Nazis? Yes, Chomsky insists. Hitler did not have the power to destroy the planet by nuclear war. Hitler ruled Germany before climate change threatened innumerable species, Mother Earth herself, and continued human existence. And yet the entire Republican Party denies that the problem even exists! Yes, it is the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.
And despite all of that, there’s not a peep about it from the pulpit. People keep going to Mass as though the most important upcoming event is the arrival of St. Nicholas at the parish potluck – or the Christmas bazaar.
So what should we do in the face of such disconnect?
How about following the example of John the Baptist, Brigid Fitzgerald and her husband?
This would entail:
Admitting that present forms of church are hopelessly disconnected from the unprecedented tragedy and threat represented by the accession to power of anti-poor climate change deniers.
Publicly moving out of our local church building.
Perhaps, opening a store front JMJ Catholic church on the Main Street Jim Wallis referred to in his article referenced above.
Inviting former Catholics, college students, and other disaffected church members to join.
Publishing the invitation in local newspapers.
Meeting in the store front for Eucharist each Sunday at the very times the local church celebrates Mass.
Empowering faithful women in the JMJ community to preach and celebrate the Eucharist.
Gathering in the storefront on Wednesday evenings for prayer and to plan the week’s acts of resistance to Trumpism in all of its manifestations.
Using those premises as a sanctuary for the bottom 1% threatened by ICE and police.
Objectors will say:
We have no authority to do this.
It’s better to continue our reform efforts from within.
This will only cause division in our church.
The status quo really doesn’t bother me, because I use the quiet provided by Sunday Mass to facilitate my own prayer life.
(If, like me, you’re of a certain age) I’m too old for such radical disruption of my life.
To such objections John the Baptist might reply:
“I had no official authority to start my desert community of resistance and reform. In fact, I was identified by the authorities as an enemy of the state. Eventually they cut off my head. So don’t expect approval.”
Reform from within? “I gave up on that early on. So did my cousin, Jesus. Both of us operated outside the temple system which we criticized harshly.”
Division in our faith communities? “That didn’t bother me either. Can you get much more divisive or polarizing than calling religious leaders a ‘brood of vipers’?”
Withdrawing into personal prayer? “The spiritual masters in my Essene community convinced me that prayer and meditation are essential elements undergirding prophetic action. However, pietism is useless unless it leads to the kind of witness I gave and risk I took on the banks of the Jordan.”
Too old? “Again, my Essene mysticism would not permit me to identify with the physical as if I were primarily a body with a soul. The truth is that we are first of all ageless spirits who happen to inhabit temporary bodies. The imperative for action is no less incumbent on older people than on the young. Hell, the elders criticized me for being too young to oppose them. I was barely 30 when they killed me.”
Again, as Jim Wallis has intimated, the specter of John the Baptist should haunt us this second Sunday of Advent, and drive our faith communities onto Main Street. These unprecedented times call for radical response outside the sacred precincts and independent of the sleepwalkers awaiting the arrival of St. Nicholas.
Readings for First Sunday in Advent: IS 2: 1-5; PS 122: 1-9; ROM 13: 11-14; MT 24: 37-44
It’s impossible for thoughtful homilists not to be stopped dead in their tracks by the opening words of today’s Gospel selection.
Jesus said to his disciples:
“As it was in the days of Noah,
so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In those days before the flood,
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,
up to the day that Noah entered the ark.
They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away.
So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man. . .”
Of course, everyone knows the Noah tale. There God warned the great patriarch that a huge flood was coming to destroy the earth, because its inhabitants had become so violent.
Presumably, Noah shared such forewarnings with his contemporaries – or at least with those wondering why he was constructing so mammoth a vessel. Apparently no one listened. You might even say they were in denial about the coming deluge. But the disaster came anyway and swept them all away.
Jesus’ words seem unmistakably pertinent to themes of climate change today — particularly in a context where USians have just elected a climate change denier to the White House and have given control of all branches of government to a party of “representatives” who refuse to recognize that humans can or should do anything about predicted natural disasters that threaten to completely replicate the catastrophe recounted in the legend of Noah and his Ark.
Such denial has rendered the Trump-led Republican Party (in the words of Noam Chomsky) “the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.” And that includes Hitler’s Nazis. Even aside from their not possessing nuclear weapons, the Nazis did not have the power to destroy all of human life even if they wanted to. The Republicans do.
And they are completely dedicated to that project. They are racing as fast as possible towards the destruction of organized human life. In the meantime, their allegiance to the fossil fuel industry and unwillingness to fund alternative sources of energy will undoubtedly produce millions of refugees from low-lying coastal regions throughout the world. The resulting influx of refugees from sea-level rise will render any exclusionary “walls” impotent and useless.
Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading become even more pointed since they connect the Noah story with imperialism — another great producer of refugees. The device for doing so is the Master’s reference to “the Son of Man.” That’s the character that the Book of Daniel invokes as the judge of all the empires that had conquered Israel – from Egypt to the Greeks. In his own day, Jesus apparently identified himself with that judge in relation to his people’s imperial enemy in first century Palestine, viz. the Roman Empire. Colonial violence, Jesus promises, will be Rome’s downfall.
Besides their suicidal climate change denial, Republicans , of course (like their Democratic counterparts), are champions of empire and U.S military supremacy.
Today because of their denial and dedication to empire, Trump and his party have taken Rome’s place as an even more dangerous Enemy of Humankind. Jesus words call us to “wake up” and recognize that danger.
All of us, the Noah reference suggests, must awaken and pray for a holy insomnia that refuses to accept as somehow “normal” the most dangerous organization in the history of the world.
If we don’t take to the streets and refuse to join Republicans’ rush to the precipice, there will surely come. . . LA DELUGE!
Today’s liturgy of the word invites us to consider the hot-button issue of immigration. The issue is contentious because conservatives in our country generally oppose immigration reform. More accurately, they tie changes in the legal status of immigrants to strengthening border security with Mexico and the building of walls along our southern border to keep undocumented immigrants out. Until such measures are foolproof, conservatives generally promise to oppose reform of immigration laws.
That’s ironic because Evangelical Christians make up the strongest component of the U.S. conservative party, the GOP. So the dominant attitude of that party on immigration ends up militating against American Christians’ brothers and sisters in faith. After all, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, an estimated 83 percent, or 9.2 million, of the 11.1 million people living in the United States illegally are Christians from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Our readings this morning call into question such exclusionary attitudes about immigration. They suggest that far from excluding immigrants, insisting on observance of law, and building walls to keep them out, Christian response to immigrants should take the form of welcoming, wealth-sharing and service.
Let me show you what I mean.
To begin with, today’s first passage from the Book of Wisdom underlines the point that the biblical People of God were all immigrants. They were unwanted strangers whose ancestors had come to Egypt to escape famine in Palestine. Remember those Bible stories of Joseph and his brothers? Read them again (Genesis 37-50). Those legends explain how the families of Jacob’s sons came to be enslaved in Egypt in the first place. As you no doubt recall, Joseph’s brothers sold him into Egyptian slavery.
However, in Egypt, Joseph landed on his feet and eventually became the Pharaoh’s Minister of Agriculture. That meant that when famine struck Joseph’s former homeland, his brothers were forced to come hats-in-hand to beg food from the very one they had betrayed. However, when they came into Joseph’s presence, his own brothers didn’t recognize him. In one of the most beautiful stories in all of world literature, the unrecognized Joseph finally discloses his true identity. Instead of punishing them for their betrayal, Joseph feeds his brothers and invites them to join him in Egypt.
In other words, Joseph’s response to immigrants and refugees was to recognize them as members of his own family and to welcome them “home.”
In today’s second reading, Paul digs further into Israel’s past only to find that Abraham himself (the original father of Israel) was himself an immigrant. He entered a land that God decided was to belong to Abraham and his descendants though the ones dwelling there didn’t share that secret understanding. (The Canaanites, of course, thought Canaan belonged to them.)
So Abraham and his sons were forced to live in poor housing – in tents, Paul recalls for us. All the while, however (like most immigrants) they dreamt of better lodging “with foundations.”
Meanwhile Yahweh saw to it that Abraham’s family grew prodigiously. They begat and begat until they seemed to everyone to be “as numerous as the stars of the sky;” they were as plentiful as grains of sand on the beach. Such legendary fertility eventually came to be seen as threatening and led one pharaoh to order the death of all of the Hebrew immigrant boys (Ex. 1:22). By Yahweh’s special intervention, Moses alone was saved from such genocidal population control.
Again, this was Israel’s God protecting immigrants as his chosen people. That’s the point today’s responsorial psalm underlines with its refrain, “Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.” Ironically those people were persecuted immigrants.
Then in today’s Gospel, Jesus presents a riddle about the identity of his faithful servants. Jesus asks, “Who, then, is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time?” His answer has implications for immigration reform measures.
In any case, you can imagine a lengthy interchange between Jesus and his audience about his riddle. No doubt, some identified “faithful and prudent stewards” with those who kept the absolute letter of the law. Others probably cited the Jewish purity code and said fidelity meant keeping the bloodline pure; it meant keeping foreigners out of the Holy Land and preventing inter-marriage with gentiles. Still others may have responded in economic terms. For them the faithful and prudent steward was probably the one who defended Jewish livelihood by keeping foreigners from taking Jewish jobs.
Jesus’ own response is different. He replies in terms of generosity, as well as in terms of service with its “law of abundance.” Jesus also invokes the law of karma. God’s faithful servants are those who sell what they have and give it to the poor. They are not the ones who are served, but those who serve. Meanwhile those who mistreat God’s servants will reap what they sow.
Above all, notice that the emphasis in Jesus’ words today is on service. His riddle brings us entirely from the “upstairs” culture of dominance into the “downstairs” culture of servants. The steward is the head servant. He’s in charge of others, but his service consists in distributing food allowances to his fellow servants. Even the Master ends up serving. When he returns from the wedding, his servants don’t wait on him. Rather as an expression of gratitude, he brings them upstairs, sits them at table and waits on everyone! (How consoling is that?! The “law of abundance” says that what we receive in life is determined by our own generosity.)
Similarly, we can’t mistreat others without harming ourselves. The law of karma decrees that we reap what we sow. Jesus endorsed that law in today’s reading. More specifically Jesus says that those who mistreat God’s servants will find themselves similarly mistreated. Here Jesus gets quite graphic: to the degree that they beat others, they themselves will be beaten. Again, it’s the law of karma; and it’s inescapable.
What does Jesus’ riddle have to do with immigration? First of all, remember it’s told by a former immigrant. According to Matthew’s story, Jesus lived in Egypt when Mary and Joseph sought refuge from Herod’s infanticide. Yes, Matthew’s Jesus must have known first-hand the experience of being an unwanted immigrant. In Egypt he spoke with a Jewish accent. Or maybe his family didn’t even bother to learn Egyptian.
Remember too that the riddle about faithful servants is posed by the Jesus who identifies with “the least of the brethren.” He said that whatever we do to the least, he considers done to him. In terms of today’s considerations, does that mean that what we do to immigrants, we do to Jesus?
As for Jesus’ response to his own riddle, it reminds us to receive immigrants as we would our Master returning home – yes, as our Master, Jesus himself – the one who ends up serving us! Again, Jesus identifies with the least of our brothers and sisters.
Does that mean that Jesus appears to us today in our service industries and in the informal economy where immigrants work as our kids’ nannies, our house cleaners, as construction workers, hotel maids, and gardeners?
At this very moment might Jesus be out there cutting my lawn, roofing my house or cleaning my bathroom?
When our border guards beat “illegals” (and worse!) are they beating Jesus?
And what does that mean for their karma – and for ours?
Those are riddles worth discussing and solving!
The way we answer will determine the side we come down on in the immigration debate.
(Discussion follows)
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