Category: Theological Animation

Sublime Madness

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An excerpt from Chris Hedges’ Obama-era Truth Dig article “A Time for ‘Sublime Madness.'”

The theologian James H. Cone captures this in his masterpiece “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” Cone says that for oppressed blacks the cross was a “paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.” Cone continues:

That God could “make a way out of no way” in Jesus’ cross was truly absurd to the intellect, yet profoundly real in the souls of black folk. Enslaved blacks who first heard the gospel message seized on the power of the cross. Christ crucified manifested God’s loving and liberating presence in the contradictions of black life — that transcendent presence in the lives of black Christians that empowered them to believe that ultimately, in God’s eschatological future, they would not be defeated by the “troubles of this world,” no matter how great and painful their suffering. Believing this paradox, this absurd claim of faith, was only possible in humility and repentance. There was no place for the proud and the mighty, for people who think that God called them to rule over others. The cross was God’s critique of power — white power — with powerless love, snatching victory out of defeat.

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An Expansive, Infinite Array of Expressions

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Feminist/Womanist/Queer Liberation and Theology, Theological AnimationLeave a comment

By Kateri Boucher, a homily for a Pride Celebration at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church (Detroit, MI) on June 4, 2023. Click here to watch the video version (homily starts around minute twenty-six).

It is a powerful thing to be celebrating this holiday in this space, with this community. I don’t take it for granted that we can gather here today in this way. It was only in 1976, 46 years ago, that the Episcopal church officially became open and affirming. As we know, there are many other streams of the Christian tradition that have done so even more recently, or still haven’t yet. 

There are many people who believe that the phrase “queer Christian” is an outrage or an oxymoron. And I can feel it coming from both sides… I’ve joked with my friends that coming out as queer was not a very big deal for me, which I’m very grateful for, but coming out as Christian to my queer friends has caused a bit of a stir. People are like, “Oh my gosh… Are you okay? Can we support you?” Just yesterday I was at a brunch with a bunch of young queer folks and I told someone I work for a church. It was kind of uncomfortable. They were kind of like, “Why?” 

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A God Who Confuses

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Tommy Airey

And at this sound the crowd gathered and was confused… – Acts 2:6a

Last weekend, I preached a Pentecost sermon at a church down in Kentucky. The text brought me back to my roots. When I was ten, I transferred to the Christian school where my mom got hired to teach 5th grade. Every single morning, we pledged allegiance to the American flag, to the Christian flag and to the bible. We would pray together. We would read something from the scriptures – and then my teacher, Mr. Cavallaro, who I absolutely loved, would proclaim, “God said it. I believe it. And that settles it.” His triumphalism is all it took to hook me.

I was ten – and I was being scripted into Christian Supremacy. My pastors and teachers propagated a world that was black and white, saved and damned. They taught me that we get to heaven by believing what God said, but also that some people are just better than others. Some people earned their wealth, their power, their sun-splashed perch overlooking the Pacific. Other people made bad decisions. They live in ghettos, reservations, barrios, slums, cells and socialist countries because they swerved from God’s Holy Word. Game Over.  

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Christian Nationalism: An Existential Agreement with God

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler

Newt Gingrich broke onto the national political scene with his “Contract with America.” It was the offering of an agreement, that if the public allowed the Gingrich coalition to lead, that coalition would then deliver on a number of points in the contract. Whether you agreed with the framing of this contract or not it conjured the image of the covenant between God and the people in the wilderness established through Moses on Mt. Sinai. There is an “If” and “then” equation to a covenant. One act is related to the other. One thing is related to the next. One thing is required in order to get to the other thing. A covenant is where at least two parties enter into an agreement.

So-called Christian Nationalism addresses the concept of a covenant, or a contract. In this view, America is the promise of God, and blessings will unfold, fulfillment will be realized, and the country will be the “City on the Hill” as long as its people uphold their part of the bargain. If the nation fails in upholding its agreement the blessings will be squandered, the country will be in decay, and the hopes found will become lost. Hence, we hear the assertions that America was founded on Christian values and principles, and its laws should reflect that. Christian norms should be upheld lest the country fall into decadence and decay. All of the assumptions, of course, are built on concepts of a conquering god, patriarchy and white supremacy. The cultural wars are attempts to uphold these sense of values, and keep the country from falling into perceived decay and obsolesce. Therefore, other religions, other peoples, like immigrants of darker hue, defy the dominant idea of “American”. Blended sexual and family structures, bended genders, and expanding expressions of sexuality suggest a crisis and the need to assert and re-assert the perceived so-called Christian American agreement into the covenant or the blessings and the nation will eventually be lost. This is where the tension emerges. 

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“As a Mighty Wind”: Or, Which Pentecost?

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting Empire, Theological Animation1 Comment

By Jim Perkinson, a homily for St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Detroit, MI (May 28, 2023)

So, Pentecost!  We will begin deep in the weeds.  Literally.  “Pente-cost”—in Greek, the 50th day!  But 50th day after what?  After Passover.  But why 50?  Well, 49 + 1.  Huh?  We scratch our heads.  But of course, the early Christians, though working in the language of the Greeks—pentekoste—are translating practice and memory of the Hebrews.  So hard this biblical faithfulness business—plunges us straight into serious cross-cultural labors and mistakes.  Such a big history of mistakes!  More on that later.  But the Hebrews! They didn’t call it Pentecost, but Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks.  7 weeks after Passover, but with the counting starting on the 2nd day of Passover—so 49 + 1. 

Ok—but then, what anchors Passover, when does it begin?  Ah, now we’re getting down to it, yes, getting down, “gettin’ down,” heavy on the down beat!  But what is down?  What direction?  There—pointing to your feet?  Yes, but what is down there?  A tile floor, you say?  And under that?  Wood floor joists?  And under that?  Pipes?  Yes, yes, and a basement and then cement.  And, and . . . But finally, even in the city, we get to it.  Earth.  What all of life stands on and grows in.  The big assumption.  The Big Momma we take for granted again and again! 

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An Act of Defiant Hope

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Another subversive bible study from Walter Brueggemann. Re-posted from churchanew.org.

This is an unabashed commendation of a book. The book by Franck Prevot is entitled Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees (2015). This children’s book, with its winsome art work, tells the story of Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan woman who learned from her mother that “a tree is worth more than its wood.” As she grew up she became aware that her people were deprived of much of their land for agriculture. She saw the devastation of the forests as her country gained independence from Britain. In the face of all the deforestation, her mother taught her:

A tree is a treasure that provides shade, fruit, pure air, and nesting places for birds, and that pulses with the vitality of life. Trees are hideouts for insects and provide inspiration for poets. A tree is a little bit of the future (21).

In response to the destruction of deforestation that she could observe, Maathai organized the Green Belt Movement to encourage villagers to plant many, many trees. She encountered much opposition from business interests and from the authoritarian government of Daniel arap Moi. She was imprisoned by the government for her oppositional stance, but slowly she is able to gain public support for her democratic vision of society. Her great courage led not only to many trees, but to the flourishing of democracy in her home country of Kenya. It is clear that her story is one that our children and grandchildren urgently need to hear, a story of courage in devotion to the wellbeing of the earth and its creaturely population. Click here to read the rest.

The Church of the Future

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Theological Animation2 Comments

By Greg Jarrell, reposted from his substack newsletter (May 1, 2023)

I was grateful to get an invite from the North Carolina region of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) to speak at their annual gathering this past weekend. Unfortunately, their schedule got waaaaaaay behind, and I was scheduled to lead one of my walks in uptown Charlotte. So I have an unheard sermon, written for a very specific moment. These things take too much time and care. Somebody needs to see it.

Here’s the quick set-up: I was to be the third of three preachers offering a short homily. The first was to speak on the church of the past and the second on the present church. I was to offer some thoughts on the church of the future. The text tying it all together was Revelation 1:1-8. Verse 8 says “‘I am the Alpha and the Omega’, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

I had seven minutes to deliver it. Part of the experience was to be me speaking way too fast. So, beloved, read as quickly as possible.

Here it is:

If I understand what has happened this afternoon, then we’ve heard Rev. Jones tell us about the past in order to describe the present we inhabit. We heard Rev. Dr. McHenry name the present we live in, which shows us what tomorrow looks like. And so, it must be my job in talking about the future to look backwards and describe that which is coming back.

What I am saying is that even here in these sermonic moments we have shared, we live in the swirl of time, the uncertain whims of temporality, the liberating unity of overlapping chronologies. The whole dizzying world of Revelation 1 is an exercise in shaking us from boring old, marching-on time and setting us into a disjuncture. In verse 8 we acknowledge the one who was and is and is to come. In verse 7, John can’t decide whether to use present of future tense. In verse 6, the present is extended into eternity; in verse 5, we get the logic-defying phrase “the firstborn of the dead;” verse four again speaks of the one who was and is and is to come; and in verse three we learn that the time is near (a phrase we will return to in a moment).

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Wild Lectionary: And Then the Stones Cried Out

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2017-04-29 21.19.52.jpgBy Melanie Delva & Coyote Terry Aleck, re-posted from May 2017

The first three readings for this Sunday are a seemingly bizarre mix of passages dealing with stones.  First, the stoning of Stephen as he testifies to the glory of Christ. Then the Psalmist describing God as his “strong rock, a castle to keep me safe.” Finally Christ as the “living stone,” encouraging followers of Christ to, “like living stones, let [ourselves] be built into a spiritual house.” Stones that cause pain and death; stones that provide safety; stones that support new life. Continue reading “Wild Lectionary: And Then the Stones Cried Out” →

My Heart Was Burning Within Me

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By Rev. Solveig Nilsen-Goodin, a sermon preached at St. Luke Lutheran Church (Portland), for Earth Day (April 23, 2023)

Scripture: Luke 24:13-35 (First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament)

The Road to Warm Springs

On the same day, two of the followers of Creator Sets Free (Jesus) were walking to Village of Warm Springs (Emmaus), seven miles out from Village of Peace (Jerusalem). As they walked along, they were talking about all that had happened. Creator Sets Free (Jesus) came alongside them as they walked, but their eyes were kept from seeing who he was.

He said to them, “What are you talking about?”

They stopped walking and a look of sadness fell over their faces. One of the men, Honored by His Father (Cleopas), answered him, “How can you not know about the things that have happened in Village of Peace (Jerusalem)? You must be coming from far away.”

“What things are you talking about?” he asked.

“About Creator Sets Free (Jesus) from Seed Planter Village (Nazareth). He was a prophet from the Great Spirit, with powerful medicine, who did many good things among all the people. The head holy men and other leaders handed him over to the People of Iron (Romans) to be put to death on the cross. We had hoped that he would free the tribes of Wrestles with Creator (Israel) from the People of Iron (Romans). It is now the third day since they killed him on the cross, but today some women told us an amazing story. Early this morning they went to his burial cave and found that his body was not there. They told us about visions of spirit-messengers who told them he was alive! Some of our men went to see with their own eyes and found the empty cave, but they did not see Creator Sets Free (Jesus).”

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Easter Faith and Empire

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By Ched Myers, a brilliant Bush-era article on Luke’s Road to Emmaus story (this weekend’s Gospel text). It is more relevant than ever.

In the first-century Pax Romana, Christians had the difficult and demanding task of discerning how to cling to a radical ethos of life – symbolized preeminently by their stubborn belief in the Resurrection of Jesus – while living under the chilling shadow of an imperial culture of domination and death. Today, in the twenty-first-century Pax Americana, U.S. Christians are faced with the same challenge: to celebrate Easter faith in the teeth of empire and its discontents.

“The words empire and imperialism enjoy no easy hospitality in the minds and hearts of most contemporary Americans,” wrote the great historian William Appleman Williams a quarter century ago in his brilliant rereading of U.S. history. Yet today, because of the ascendancy of the New Right’s ideological project (whose intellectual architecture is typified by the Project for a New American Century), the words are increasingly used approvingly in regard to U.S. policy. We are indeed well down the road of imperial unilateralism, and are seeing clearly that this means a world held hostage to wars and rumors of war. The conquest and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq have had an enormous human and political cost. Meanwhile, the Unites States has military bases on every continent and some form of military presence in almost two-thirds of the 189 member states in the United Nations.

Read the full article here.