The Call of the Rich Man as a Text of Terror

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JesusBy Ched Myers, for the 20th Sunday in Pentecost (Mark 10:17-31), originally posted on October 8, 2015

Note: This is an ongoing series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B, 2015. This post is 2-3 times longer than previous ones because of the importance of this text to our struggle to be disciples within a capitalist culture.
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The story of Jesus and the rich man lies at the crossroads of Mark’s narrative. From here Jesus will turn toward Jerusalem, a destination of confrontation with the Powers that evoked dread and denial among his disciples then (10:32) as now. But the encounter between Jesus and this affluent gentleman represents a theological crossroad as well.
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Reading Jesus and the Rich Man on Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Redistributive Justice and a Discipleship of Decolonization

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Saskatoon Catholic cathedral doors, where Indigenous activists have planted red handprints to remind us of the children whose graves are now being discovered at Indian Residential Schools.

In preparation for Indigenous People’s Day on October 11, we share this edited excerpt from Elaine Enns & Ched Myers, Healing Haunted Histories: A Settler Discipleship of Decolonization(Cascade, 2021), pp 275, 281f.

Christians are too often responsible for injecting what Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace” into public conversations that seek to reckon with historical violations through reparations. Our sentimentality would presume to resolve centuries of oppression with ritual apologies. But healing historical injustices and violence requires systemic transformation, not rhetorical contrition. The problem is, the culture of capitalism in North America has few ethical resources that consider seriously wealth or power redistribution of any kind, much less as reparation. Indeed, redistributive justice as a concept is roundly condemned as heretical here.

But the biblical imaginary can reinvigorate our political imagination. As an example, let us reread the infamous gospel story of Jesus and the rich man—the Revised Common Lectionary’s gospel reading for 10/10/21—with our eye on Indigenous Peoples’ Day (10/11/21). 

Continue reading “Reading Jesus and the Rich Man on Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Redistributive Justice and a Discipleship of Decolonization” →

Love Reckons with the Past

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An excerpt from Kiese Laymon’s classic 2015 essay “Black Churches Taught Us to Forgive White People. We Learned to Shame Ourselves,” published in the wake of the white supremacist mass murder at Emanuel AME in Charleston, SC

Many of us have made a life of hoping to get chosen for jobs, chosen for awards, chosen for acceptance from people, structures and corporations bred on white supremacy. We’re hoping to get chosen by people who can not see us. Knowing that they hate and terrorize us doesn’t stop us from wanting to get chosen. That’s the crazy thing. Everything about this country told Grandma, a black woman born in Central Mississippi in 1920s, to love, honor and forgive white folks. And this country still tells me, a black boy born in Mississippi in the 1970s, to titillate and tend to the emotional, psychological and spiritual needs of white people in my work.

I told my Grandma that we should have chosen ourselves. I tell her that we should have let us in. We should have held each other, and fallen in healthy love with each other, instead of watching shame make parts of us disappear.

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Family, Gender & Power

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Adam, EveBy Ched Myers, for the 19th Sunday of Pentecost (Mark 10:1-16), originally posted on October 1, 2015

Note: This is an ongoing series of Ched’s brief comments on the Markan gospel readings from the Revised Common Lectionary during year B, 2015.

This Sunday is the Feast of St. Francis. There is much to celebrate about the recent U.S. visit of the Bishop of Rome who took this saint’s name, even for Protestants (after all, October 4 is also World Communion Sunday). In particular, Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’ is an important statement of public theology addressing the implications of our interlocking ecological crises for our civilization. So we would do well to focus preaching on these themes, perhaps through the lens of the gospel’s concern for children (i.e. future generations). Continue reading “Family, Gender & Power” →

Fed

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Image credit: “Food,” @berkshirecat, March 3, 2006.

By Shannon Evans. Originally published in Geez 61: Seeds are Sacred.

We hungered to imagine a world where people could just eat together without anyone trying to rescue the other, without anyone more powerful or anyone more shamed.

I raised my sweater and put the baby to my breast, the still-thick rolls of my middle cushioning his tiny body as he slurped hungrily for his dinner. Around us, people milled about, flicking cigarettes into the grass to free their fingers for a plate and fork.

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That’s How It Goes

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By Antonio Cosme (Detroit, MI)

my words to the City of Detroit City Planning Commission after my friend David Pitawanakwat gave an awesome Land Acknowledgement…

My name is Antonio Cosme, a coahuiltecan and boricua life long detroiter. I do a lot of work with anishinaabe folks… i’ve been adopted by the martins family, a prominent west michigan anishinaabe family.

I work at National Wildlife Federation, connecting kids with nature, and looking deeply with them at the roots of the ecological crisis we’re all facing… colonization.

We are critical people yet, we do beautiful things too…

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“Defect-ive” Discipleship: Recovering from Domination Culture

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JesusBy Ched Myers, for the 18th Sunday of Pentecost (Mark 9:38-50), originally posted on September 24, 2015

This week continues our journey through the second cycle of Mark’s discipleship catechism. Here John boasts that the disciples shut down the work of an exorcist who was not “following us” (9:38). Under these narrative circumstances, never was the “royal we” more inappropriate! Jesus’ attempt to deconstruct hierarchical power is met with the crudest of assertion of “franchise entitlement.” But is not this a poignant (if sardonic) portrait of how we Christians so often look at our faith traditions as membership clubs? Continue reading ““Defect-ive” Discipleship: Recovering from Domination Culture” →

Whose Side Are We On?

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Folks committed to a biblical faith, but also demanding beefed up border security have a serious problem. They will struggle to find support in the sacred text. Throughout the Hebrew bible, God is devoted to steadfast love, justice and a faithfulness to the most vulnerable, often simplified with this trifecta: widows, orphans and immigrants. In the Christian scriptures, Jesus says that those who are faithful will find him rising up in immigrants and welcome them. Images like this interrogate us. Whose side are we on?

Adelante

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By Ruth Sawin, a letter to Daniel Berrigan (right)

Monday, November 10, 2014

Dear Fr. Dan,            

Having just finished your book, “The Steadfastness of the Saints,” on the flight home from El Salvador, I want to tell you of the gift that reading it on this journey has been, for me.               

I must first, of course, mention the twist in the gut that comes with reading about the work of Central American Jesuits, written five years before the martyrdom of six of them at the University of Central America, and more, since. You could not have known that would come, although I think you and all who worked in mission in Central America then knew that it was always a possibility.               

Also, during this trip we got the electrifying news that Fr. Jon Sobrino had announced that Rome announced on Tuesday (the day after we visited his tomb) that Monseñor Romero would be beatified in 2015… news which was contradicted in the edition of “La Prensa” I saw on the trip home. It seems fitting, given all the confusion that surrounded him in life, that news (or rumors) of the official recognition of the sainthood long recognized by the people, would come in confusing fits and starts. It really doesn’t matter; I still hear God whispering, “Adelante!”               

Continue reading “Adelante” →

The Cross in Everyday Life: Embracing the “Least”

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crucifixionBy Ched Myers, for the 17th Sunday of Pentecost (Mark 9:30-37), re-posted from September 2015

In the wake of the “confessional crisis” (last week’s reading), Mark’s narrative now turns to a triple cycle of object lessons and teaching I call the “discipleship catechism.” This Sunday’s gospel text comes from the second and longest cycle, with its focus of instruction on the less heroic, yet perhaps more difficult, practice of the Way in daily life.

The cross represents more than nonviolent resistance to the Powers; it includes the struggle against patterns of domination in interpersonal and social relationships as well. Thus Mark here addresses several expressions of social power imbalance: greatest and least (9:36f); outsiders and insiders (9:38-41); offenders and victims (9:42-50); male and female (10:2-12); children and adults (10:13-16); and rich and poor (10:17-31). This sequence exhibits certain similarities to catechetical traditions found elsewhere in the New Testament relating to family and community life such as the so-called “House-tables” (e.g. Col 3:12-4:6). Continue reading “The Cross in Everyday Life: Embracing the “Least”” →