Turning the Tables

Jesus turns the tables to put things right. Obviously, I’m still working on the Temple Incident recorded in John 2. Doing a first-person sermon as Nicodemus is fun and has some value. But it’s also a way to punt on the real repentance issues in this text.

The systems of White Male Supremacy that structure white Christianity are not going down without a fight. It would be easy for us white liberal Christians if the whole issue were Franklin Graham leveraging his Operation Christmas mailing lists to fear-monger his racist, xenophobic, homophobic bullshit. If only the tables to be turned belonged exclusively to those “other white folks,” this would all be so much easier.

But it’s our tables that need turning as well. Jesus turns the tables to put things right. In John 2, Jesus is clearing away the obstacles to abundant life. That climaxes in a few weeks with his welcome to outsiders in John 12. It is this boundary-busting welcome that provides the final step toward his glorification on the cross. It’s when the outsiders want in that the reign of God fully arrives in John.

Nobody really wants that kind of talk in our white, mainline churches. We don’t want to go and talk to people in our neighborhoods who don’t already belong to our churches. We don’t want to keep doing hybrid worship – both in person and online – once The Pandemic has passed. That was just an expedient to keep our insiders inside. We don’t want to take nonmembers into account when we make plans for our property that might affect them. We don’t want our tables to be turned in such a way that we are guests and Jesus is the host.

That’s all crazy talk, we think. If we go down that path, we’ll end up turning over tables just like that nut from Nazareth. If we start tossing money around like it belongs to the poor people, where will it end? After all, somebody has to pay the bills to keep the Temple in business, right?

We white folks have made God’s houses into spiritual shopping malls where we sell comfort to the comfortable, serenity to the settlers, and peace to the privileged. As long as they are paying the bills, we’ll keep selling the goods. And after a while, the last one left can turn out the lights.

Jesus turns the tables to put things right. When that happens, the system responds with violence. Abundant life disrupts the power of scarcity. Bigger pies are harder to manage and manipulate for personal gain. Good news for the poor is, at least in the short term, bad news for the rich. Zeal for God’s house will consume us, we’re afraid. So we set the tables back up almost as fast as Jesus turns them over.

Jesus isn’t arrested at the moment he enacts havoc, because the crowd approves of what he does. It’s only the powerful, the privileged, and the propertied who get their underwear in a bunch about the difference between a demonstration, a protest, and a riot. Jesus enacts a symbolic prophetic sign, but he turns over real tables, scatters real money, chases real livestock. When we spiritualize this into some merely verbal protest against a religious system, we let ourselves off the hook.

But Jesus enacts the nightmare of every entrenched power structure. The crowd might see the Matrix, might wake up from the nightmare, might come to know that the system was created by and for the privileged, rigged for the rich. The goal of the system is to make sure that poor, white men continue to blame anyone but rich white men. In our system, race makes that identification easier. So that’s where we start the turning.

Jesus turns the tables to put things right. What must be overturned in the Church to put things right?

Before we jump to that, let’s start with me. I need my tables turned regularly. For example, I was in a conversation not long ago where a Black pastor reminded us of the ways in which White Christians have debased and destroyed Black communities. He wasn’t particularly aggressive in his comments. He simply told the truth without padding it for us white folks. I was grateful for the candor (sort of).

I didn’t hear one thing I hadn’t heard or read before. Yet, I felt my face get hot. I felt my head begin to shake. My guts started vibrating in rhythm with my lower jaw. In response to just the slightest honest input, I was ready to tip into a full-blown shame storm. To compound my response, I was then ashamed for being ashamed.

That response won’t do. But it’s necessary. “For through the law I died to the law,” Paul writes in Galatians 2:19-20, “so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” I don’t like having my ego crucified any more than anyone else does. But there’s no real life without that death.

For me, turning the tables means spending more time hearing face to face from my Black, Brown, Native, and Asian American siblings. It’s not up to them to educate and reform me. That’s my work and our white folks work together. I need to continue to render myself less dangerous and more resilient in such conversations. And I look forward to opportunities not merely to become a better person but to work as a partner with my siblings in ways to make our community better.

And then there’s the Church. Jesus turns the tables to put things right. We are called to overturn the “White Liberal Limbo” game. That is the game where we ask, “How slowwwwwww can we gooooooo?” As long as we give the most fragile folks veto power over constructive change, we will continue to maintain our systems of white male supremacy. If congregations die doing the right thing, that’s faithfulness. The alternative at this point is to be whitewashed tombs filled with the bones of people who don’t know they’re dead already.

I believe that in the coming decades we’re going to end up with a number of church buildings and other properties that will simply stand empty because all the white people have either died or left. Let’s make plans now to give those properties to cheated communities or to sell them and repay the proceeds to those communities. I know we white liberals are happy about justice until it starts to cost us money. But the tables of the moneychangers must be overturned if we White folks are to be freely and fully human.

It’s easy to write that knowing that reparations are unlikely to happen on any scale in my lifetime. Talk is cheap. So, we are establishing a Reparations Repayment Calendar at our house. We will give money to a number of organizations and causes that advance the agendas of racial justice and repair. From our perspective, these are not “donations” (although the IRS would regard them as such). These are repayments of debts owed for centuries.

For example, in honor of the Great Three Days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter, we will give to the NAACP Legal Defense fund and to a local bail relief fund. Jesus was crucified between two thieves. He went and preached to the spirits who were in prison. The stone is rolled away, and the jail cell of the tomb is empty. We see a connection.

On Thanksgiving, we will give to the Omaha tribal organization. Our house stands on Omaha land. It is only ours because of the original theft based on the Christian “Doctrine of Discovery.” We can be grateful for how the land was loved and stewarded before we got here. And we can begin to make legitimate payments for the damage we have done to Native communities. We see a connection.

In Epiphany, we remember that the Wise Ones came “from the East.” We can give to the the ELCA’s Association of Lutherans of Arab and Middle Eastern Heritage. The strategy for that mission in our church is chronically underfunded, and we can make some small gift to address that need. During Lent we can direct our offerings to the Urban League of Omaha, since Dr. King’s birthday almost always falls during that liturgical season.

We can give a Pentecost offering to a Latinx-related cause in honor of Cinco de Mayo. In February we can support a cause focused on the concerns of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, since that’s about the time of the Chinese New Year.

You can see where we’re headed with this. It will be a work in progress. It will not be a substitute for any other efforts toward education, advocacy, support, growth, and further repentance. But it will be, we hope, a way to make “table-turning” a part of our ongoing rhythms of faith and life.

Right now, however, there’s something of particular urgency. Our racist former president has stoked the fires of hatred against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The number of hate crimes against the AAPI communities has skyrocketed in the last year. In response, the AAPI Association in the ELCA drafted a statement that was approved within hours by the ELCA conference of bishops. You can read that statement here.

In addition, plans are being made to make March 21 a Sunday of prayer and lament in our churches around this disgusting rhetoric and related crimes. That’s not likely to be the most popular thing a pastor or other leaders have ever advocated. But it’s a way to set a few things a little closer to right.

Jesus turns the tables to put things right. In this Lenten season, we are called to be turned and to turn. How will we answer?

Luther Meets QAnon: Discipleship in a Democracy

Some years ago, I was discussing the Christian faith and politics with a group of parishioners. I remember the sincere confession of one of my favorite members. “I’m a good Christian, a good American, and a good Republican,” she said, wide-eyed and earnest. It was clear that she saw no daylight separating those three categories. In fact, further discussion revealed that she considered those three categories to be complementary aspects of one reality. She was, as I recall, shocked to learn that someone might think it was anything other than a good idea to connect all three.

My dear former parishioner was not and would not have considered being one of the violent insurrectionists who invaded the United States capitol just over three weeks ago. She would, I am sure, be horrified by such an action (although it’s been years since I’ve spoken with her, so I can’t be certain). Nor would she ever imagine that her sincere confession is directly connected with that attempted lynching and coup. But it is part of the historic and cultural through-line we now know as “Christian nationalism.”

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

I put both words in quotation marks because it seems to me that “Christian nationalists” are neither Christian nor nationalist in any helpful sense of either word. But the reality of this frightening political movement requires genuine Christian reflection and action.

With that in mind, I appreciated ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton’s participation in the panel discussion “Democracy and Faith Under Siege: Responding to Christian Nationalism,” hosted by Christians Against Christian Nationalism, an initiative of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Freedom, or BJC. You can find the youtube.com recording of that discussion at https://youtu.be/QmgWHBoGBi8.

Bishop Eaton joined Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church, USA, and Dr. Andrew Whitehead. Whitehead has co-authored a book, along with Samuel Perry, entitled Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States. Whitehead is an associate professor of sociology at Clemson University. He is also the assistant director of the ARDA, a leading online religion data archive and an associate editor for the journal Sociology of Religion. Perry is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma. He is also affiliated with both the Religious Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies Departments.

The book and the conversation are, of course, timely in the context of the January 6, 2021, insurrection and invasion of the United States capitol, carried out at least in part by avowed and identifiable “Christian nationalists.” In the discussion, Bishop Eaton referred to the recent ELCA social message on “Government and Civic Engagement in the United States: Discipleship in a Democracy.” That message was adopted unanimously, as the header of the document indicates, by the ELCA Church Council on June 24, 2020. You can find a PDF of the message at https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Government_and_Civic_Engagement_Social_Message.pdf.

Bishop Eaton referred to the social message several times in her comments and encouraged viewers to access, read, and reflect on the document. So, I did. I hope you will do so as well. The message is not only worth the time to read, but it will serve as an excellent focus for small group discussion on the proper relationship, from a Lutheran theological perspective, between Christian discipleship and citizenship in a democracy. That relationship leads to conclusions diametrically opposed to the tenets of “Christian nationalism.”

“Lutherans care about government because it is a gift from God,” the message begins, “intended for the safety and flourishing of human life.” Martin Luther regarded good government as one of the many blessings given by God the Creator. He was painfully aware of the actual and potential failings of human government and governing authorities, as we can see in many of his writings. But, for Luther, the alternative of no government was far worse since human sin would have free reign in the world.

I like to illustrate the classic Lutheran view of the value of government by thinking about a bowling alley. We have small grandchildren, and when we go bowling with them, they use the “bumpers” to keep the ball on the proper lane. One function of government (and of God’s law in general) is to function like those bumpers, keeping cantankerous humans roughly within the limits of God’s life-giving laws. The other function of government is to get the ball to strike the pins – the more the better! That’s the positive pay-off.

Good government, then, limits the expression and consequence of human sin. And good government can lead, when properly managed, to greater “safety and flourishing of human life.” But what do we Lutherans mean by “good” government? “To evaluate how well agencies of government are doing their proper work of providing for the safety and well-being of those within the country’s borders and/or jurisdiction,” the message says, “Lutherans ask one simple but all-encompassing question: is the neighbor being served?” (page 9, my emphasis).

This focus flows directly from Luther’s understanding of faith and works. It is by faith in Christ’s justifying grace that we are put into a right relationship with God by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can do nothing to deserve or earn that righteousness. It is purely a gift. Since God does not need our good works, we can spend every bit of that time, energy, and attention on our neighbor.

In The Freedom of a Christian, Luther puts it this way. “Nevertheless, no one needs even one of these works to attain righteousness and salvation. For this reason, in all of one’s works a person should in this context be shaped by and contemplate this thought alone,” Luther continues, “to serve and benefit others in everything that may be done, having nothing else in view except the need and advantage of the neighbor” (my emphasis). The Lutheran view of government is an extension of Luther’s theology into our political life.

We should note that this view is not limited by the type of government system in which we Lutheran Christians might find ourselves. But that doesn’t mean we are neutral as to which types of human government are better or worse for loving the neighbor. We are not. The social message offers more specific guides “for assessing the performance of government.” These guides make it clear that our Lutheran perspective creates some policy “bumpers” as well.

There are fourteen such guides, but a few merit comments. Consent of the governed is more likely to produce an effective system than other options. Thus, “efforts to restrict access to voting should be condemned and resisted.” Public service can be and is a way Christians live out their vocations in Christ. Such service is rendered for the sake of others and not for personal gain, since love of neighbor is the limiting principle. Good government deals with citizens impartially, rendering “strangers encountered in public spaces” into “neighbors.” Neighbors deserve respect and dignity since all people are created in God’s image.

Systems and structures should be regulated in such a way that all strangers are treated as neighbors. So, safety, market, and environmental regulations supersede opportunities for personal gain when the welfare of any neighbor is at stake. Even though such systems might be fallible, the real concern is evil that is structured into a governmental system.

“Government becomes evil,” the message asserts, “when its goals, policies, and programs are designed or transformed into vehicles for harming the neighbor.” As examples of such structural evil, the message points to voter suppression laws and gerrymandering. Since human government is fallible and sometimes structured for evil, “abuses of power must be named and challenged.” The message speaks in particular defense of whistleblowers here. And “public servants” who help themselves should be resisted and changed.

People are citizens of a particular nation and under the government of that nation. People are our “neighbors” because God makes them so, regardless of any human legal, social, or political classification. “Just as Christians enjoy the ‘priesthood of all believers’” as part of God’s work of salvation in Christ, “all people are to enjoy a ‘neighborhood of all residents’” from God’s work of benevolent creation. This means that individual freedom is not absolute (under any system, including the American system). Instead, individual freedom of citizens is always conditioned (at least for Christians) by the needs of the neighbor.

As a result of this understanding, Lutheran Christians are called to active civic engagement for the sake of the neighbor. This includes working both to limit the consequences of sin and to expand the capacities for human flourishing. This work may require “when there is no lawful recourse” the exercise of “nonviolent civil disobedience.” The message is at pains to make clear, I think, that protests against police brutality, for example, are part of loving the neighbor and not contrary to that vocation.

The message reaffirms “democratic self-governance” as the best way to structure faithful neighbor love in human societies (at least until something better comes along). In this system “our institutional witness is to foster justice, racial and social equality, reconciliation, and healing with compassion and imagination.” No matter what system of government frames out cultural life, Christians have neighbor love as the standard against which to measure the faithfulness and effectiveness of that system.

What does this message say to us about “Christian nationalism”? It says that no human government is an ultimate concern or an end itself. For Christians, human government is a means to an end, a gift God provides to facilitate more effective love for the neighbor. To the extent that government fulfills that function, it deserves our support and participation. To the extent that government fails in that function, it deserves our criticism and resistance. No human government should ever be an object of worship or demand the unquestioning and ultimate loyalty of a Christian.

Such a demand, however, stands at the heart of what is called “Christian nationalism.” This perspective, as was noted in the BJC conversation, conflates “patriotism,” a twisted version of Christian theology, and a mythological version of American history. The result is a toxic, violent, and idolatrous cocktail that intoxicates the adherents with a lust for white male supremacy. Mix in the bad science fiction of QAnon, and the result is a sort of mass psychosis.

Luther often suggested his version of the Golden Rule as a primary guide for Christian conduct. Treat one another as Christ has treated you. “Without a doubt we are named after Christ,” he wrote in The Freedom of a Christian, “not absent from us but dwelling in us; in other words: provided that we believe in him and that, in turn and mutually we are a second Christ to one another, doing for our neighbors as Christ does for us.” That principle underlies the social message and all faithful Lutheran social teaching.

I would be glad for more conversation on this subject and on the social message itself. It is not a perfect or complete document, but it is an excellent foundation for both reflection and action. Please share your thoughts if you wish.

Stop State-Sponsored Killing in the United States

Brandon Bernard was executed by United States authorities on December 10, 2020. He was convicted of participating in the murders of Stacie and Todd Bagley in 1999. Bernard did not commit the actual murders. The one who killed the Bagleys, Christopher Vialva, was executed in September. Bernard was the youngest person in seventy years to receive a death sentence in the United States. He was an adolescent when he was convicted.

Bernard is the ninth person to be executed this fall by federal authorities after a seventeen-year hiatus in federal executions. He is the first to be executed during a lame-duck presidency in 130 years. Five more people await executions before the presidential inauguration on January 20, 2021. Four of the five scheduled to be killed are black.

State-sponsored killing has been demonstrated to be ineffective as a public-safety policy. It is not a useful practice. State-sponsored killing has been and is currently highly racialized and discriminatory in its application and outcome. It is both unconstitutional and wrong in the state’s own terms. State-sponsored killing is contrary to ethical doctrine and practice in a large number of Christian traditions. Historically Christians have argued and organized against state-sponsored killing in a variety of settings.

So why do we continue to do it?

The racialized element is obvious to anyone who can remember a few statistics. Many would argue that targeting black and brown people with executions is not a bug in the system but rather a feature. I think that’s correct. The evidence for that argument is quite clear and compelling. State-sponsored killing is the only form of legally sanctioned lynching which remains in our state and federal criminal punishment systems. Other forms of lynching continue to occur by the hands of agents of the state. But, in theory at least, these actions are crimes which can and should be prosecuted.

In addition to the racialized, white supremacist dimension of state-sponsored killing is the punitive framework of our legal systems and of our culture. In 1885 Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful.” Nietzsche was no friend of democracy or “the people,” but he understood that few if any humans are good enough and wise enough to punish others without powerful limits and safeguards. We can talk ourselves into our own righteousness in about fifteen seconds. After that, we can justify most any behavior.

Why do we Americans have this penchant for punishing? We live in a system of myths and metaphors which, I believe, make this kind of punishing reasonable and necessary. We believe that we get to where we are in life on the basis of our own merit (or de-merit). If someone fails in this system, they are fully and individually to blame. Punishing another for evil undergirds my belief that I should be rewarded for my goodness. Only the worthy should be rewarded, and it’s surprising how often the worthy look just like me.

I think that our penchant for punishing is deeply rooted in our national theology. I don’t believe people share some sort of religious perspective consciously. But most of us come from religious tribes (somewhere in the misty past) that subscribed to the image of a God who punishes sinners. More than that, this God requires payment in order to be good and loving. So this God requires the death of God’s own son to make adequate payment for the sins of the rest of us. If God’s own Son cannot escape the realities of the punishment system, what hope do any of the rest of us have?

I would point out that this punishment system and god are not the only images available or possible. For another way to see things, I would refer you to my post on Aulen’s Christus Victor. You can read that at https://wordpress.com/post/lowellhennigs.com/391.

N. T. Wright points out that we tend to become like what we worship. So if our god is punishing and violent, it should be no surprise that many of us are as well. However, I think the process works even more powerfully in the reverse. We worship what we want to become. Often we engage in practices and then seek a story to justify them rather than the other way around. In this culture, we want to become powerful, successful, dominant, rich, secure, and blissfully ignorant of the suffering of others. So I don’t find it surprising that we would gravitate toward images of a god that reinforce these outcomes — at least for those who are already privileged and powerful (aka white).

We don’t fall into this punitive image of God by accident or default. We must choose this particular image, and do so assertively, because the primary images of God in the Bible are quite the opposite. Yes, there are images of violence, sacrifice, punishment and execution. Those appear, however, to be the minority report and are critiqued and rejected by other parts of the Bible.

For example, there is the irritated testimony of Jonah. The cranky prophet wants a god who will punish the sinners, but Jonah knows that God is not like this. Jonah “prayed to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing” (Jonah 4:2, NRSV). Ready to relent from punishing! What a concept!

Some of us Christians tend to give pride of place to the words of Jesus, oddly enough. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,'” Jesus preaches in Matthew 5. “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” (Matthew 5:43-45 NRSV). We Christians cannot dictate on our own how the secular state should operate, no matter how much some Christians want to do that. But we could at least listen to our own most important voice on the matter.

I am privileged to be part of a group reading and studying Bryan Stevenson’s book, Just Mercy. Who knows more about the misapplication of state-sponsored killing in our time than Stevenson? Perhaps no one. “The death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit,” he writes. “The real question of capital punishment in this country is, Do we deserve to kill?” (page 313). Given how state-sponsored killing is structured, administered, and applied, I think the answer is obviously, “No.”

But we continue to punish, and we’re not all that particular about who gets the punishment. We live in a culture that appears constitutionally incapable of self-reflection, honest admission of failure, and willingness to make corrections and amends. In spiritual terms, we seem incapable of confession, lament, and repentance. Confession, lament, and repentance require admissions of wrong and guilt. But we assume none of the responsibility for how the lives of others turn out. Our cultural and self-serving meritocracy requires that we blame and punish someone whether that makes a real difference or not.

We Christians claim to worship the God who is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and who relents from punishing. It may be that our greatest mission in this or any society is to nudge the needle away from retribution and in the direction of grace. Unfortunately, many Christians in this society currently are helping to move the needle decisively toward irrevocable punishment (AG Barr is, after all, a practicing Roman Catholic). In light of that, I find it unsurprising that so many regard Christian witness as unconvincing and incredible.

“Each of us is more,” Bryan Stevenson writes in Just Mercy, “than the worst thing we’ve ever done” (page 17-18). If you asked me for a secular description of the Christian good news, I think I might just quote his words here. If he’s right, and he is, then state-sponsored killing is a surrender to despair and an insult to the image of God in which each of us is created. Until we stop this killing, we will continue to be a culture in moral decline and a faith tradition drowning in hypocrisy.

Here is a link to information on the ELCA social statement regarding the death penalty, adopted by the denomination in 1991:

https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Death-Penalty.

And here is a link to information on the ELCA social statement regarding the criminal justice system, adopted by the denomination in 2013.

https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Criminal-Justice.