Outward Journey / Inward Journey

Somewhere between 6pm and 8pm, Central Time, on November 4th, 2008, the eschatology of American evangelicals will become clear. If John McCain wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical has an eschatology of politics. Or, alternatively, if Barack Obama wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical too has an eschatology of politics. Or, we could turn each around, if a more Democrat oriented evangelical becomes depressed and hopeless because McCain wins, or if a Republican oriented evangelical becomes depressed or hopeless because Obama wins, those evangelicals are caught in an empire-shaped eschatology of politics.

Where is our hope? To be sure, I hope our country solves its international conflicts and I hope we resolve poverty and dissolve our educational problems and racism. But where does my hope turn when I think of war or poverty or education or racism? Does it focus on November 4? Does it gain its energy from thinking that if we get the right candidate elected our problems will be dissolved? If so, I submit that our eschatology has become empire-shaped, Constantinian, and political. And it doesn’t matter to me if it is a right-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Republican wins, or a left-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Democrat wins. Each has a misguided eschatology.

Now before I take another step, it must be emphasized that I participate in the election; and I think it makes a difference which candidate wins; and I think from my own limited perspective one candidate is better than the other.

One American political party has adopted "country first" as a campaign slogan. That same party is the party of political preference for the bulk of the evangelical community in our nation. I have been waiting for the significance of that statement to dawn on someone in the conservative evangelical community, but to date they seem to be blissfully unaware of the idolatrous overtones of their politics.

Christians are warned not to divide their loyalties. We put "God first" or else God is not God in our lives. Nothing in scripture authorizes God's people to equate their loyalty to God with loyalty to their nation. There is much that forbids it. Jesus commands us to be singlemindedly devoted to God and his kingdom (Matt. 6:24-34). His kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).

Christians should not even put "country second." Discipleship requires that we share the same priorities as our Lord. If God so loved "the world" that he sent his only Son to die for it, and the Son was obedient unto death, then the good of the world as a whole deserves more concern from his disciples than the good of any single nation. At best, then, country only comes in third.

That's not a message that most American evangelicals have ears to hear. They don't have ears because they have no desire to pay attention to the genuine demands of discipleship. The thought of self-conscious self-sacrifice for the benefit of strangers is completely foreign to them. They're looking for cheap grace. They only have ears for those who will tell them what they want to hear and who ask them to make sacrifices only for what is near and dear.

It would be hard for me to conceive of a more damning indictment of American evangelicalism if it weren't for the research that indicates how widely evangelicals defend the government's use of torture as an investigative technique.

Sermon for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (6 July 2008), delivered at First Congregational United Church of Christ of Bloomer, Wisconsin.

What if I don’t make it to church on time?  What if I get sick and die?  What will happen to the kids?  What if I can’t pay my credit card bill, or my mortgage?  What if I lose my job?  What if there’s another terrorist attack, or what if the government becomes authoritarian and tries to take away our rights?  What if the DVD doesn’t play because of the scratch on the bottom?  What if I get E. Coli from eating bad tomatoes?  What if global warming means that Florida will be permanently flooded – how would I get my oranges?  What if my grades aren’t as good as I thought they would be? What if I worry too much?

For most, if not all of us, life is full of anxiety.  Some worries and concerns are well-founded, and some are rather silly.  Some are about big issues that are entirely outside of our control and some are about mundane, every-day matters.  Some worries are trivial and allayed by a moment’s reasoned thought, and others keep us awake at night.  Of worries, there seems to be no end.

One troublesome question, though, has plagued men and women for centuries. It’s one that has especially concerned Christians, and has the potential to cause more anxiety than any other, because it deals with eternal, not passable, matters.  It is a question that has concerned some of the greatest minds the world has ever seen, like Saint Augustine and Martin Luther, and it’s also a question that can be asked, with equal sincerity, by an alcoholic who’s boozed her life away. 

Yes, happy 4th of July! According to the calendar of the Church, July 4th’s real significance is that it is the feast day of St. Elizabeth of Portugal (1271-1336), a patron Saint of peacemakers.

The sad fact, however, is that if you were to attend Mass on this day, the chances of your priest mentioning this feast are slim to none. Instead, you are likely to participate in a Eucharist which has been transformed into a syncretistic ritual of american civil religion. Thank God that, despite the sectarian tendencies of the american Church, the transnational Church calls us Catholics to be a peculiar people who mark time differently than the rest of the world, and the rest of our nation.

St. Elizabeth, pray for us, that we american Catholics may truly take our place in the one, transnational Body of Christ that resists the dismemberment caused by our tendency to cling to national allegiances. And on the day that the rest of the united states celebrates its foundational myth of violence and the sacrifices of soldiering which parody the Cross, let us be ever more formed by the words of Jesus in the Gospel reading for July 4th: “Go and learn the meaning of the words, I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”

You know, you'd think that we Reformed folk would be somewhat innoculated from the nationalism-as-religion bug, what with our emphasis on God's sovereignty, which makes American booyahism look like a sickly imitation of the real thing.  And yet, I saw last night that the (nominally RCA-affiliated) Chrystal Cathedral's 'Hour of Power' program (don't get me started on so-called 'television churches' -- that's a whole 'nother post) is advertising that 'the world's largest indoor American flag' being raised in their 'sanctuary' during a 'worship service'.  This makes me wonder what, exactly, is being worshipped.  How sad that people are being misled by the great civil religion lie.  St. Elizabeth, pray for us!

The Romanist collect for today:

Father of peace and love, you gave St. Elizabeth the gift of reconciling enemies. By the help of her prayers give us the courage to work for peace among men, that we may be called the sons of God. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Amen!

And what is the object of my love?  I asked the earth and it said: 'It is not I.'  I asked all that is in it; they made the same confession.  I asked the sea, the deeps the living creatures that creep, and they responded: 'We are not your God, look beyond us.'  I asked the breezes which blow and the entire air with its inhabitants said: 'Anaximenes was mistaken; I am not God.'  I asked heaven, sun, moon, and stars; they said: 'Nor are we the God whom you seek.'  And I said to all these things in my external environment: 'Tell me of my God who you are not, tell me something about him.'  And with a great voice they cried out: 'He made us'.  My question was the attention I gave to them, and their response was their beauty.

-Augustine of Hippo (397) Confesssons, Book X, vi (9a).  Trans. by Henry Chadwick (1991).  Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 183.

With the mind and intellect which you have given them, they [philosophers] investigate these matters [measuring the constellations, tracing the paths of the stars].  They have found out much.  Many years beforehand they have predicted eclipses of sun and moon, foretelling the day, the hour, and whether total or partial.  And their calculation has not been wrong.  It has turned out just as they predicted.  They have put the rules which they discovered into books which are read to this day.  On this basis prediction can be made of the year, the month of the year, the day of the month, the hour of the day, and what proportion of light will be eclipsed in the case of either sun or moon; and it happens exactly as predicted.  People who have no understanding of these things are amazed and stupefied.  Those who know are exultant and are admired.  Their irreligious pride makes them withdraw from you and eclipse your great light from reaching themselves.  They can foresee a future eclipse of the sun, but do not perceive their own eclipse of the present.  For they do not in a religious spirit investigate the source of the intelligence with which they research into these matters.  Moreover, when they do discover that you are their Maker, they do not give themselves to you so that they may preserve what you have made.  They do not slay in sacrifice to you what they have made themselves to be.  They do not kill their own pride like high-flying birds, their curiosity like 'fishes of the sea' and their sexual indulgence like 'the beasts of the field', so that you, God, who are a devouring fire, may consume their mortal concerns and recreate them for immortality.

-Augustine of Hippo (397) Confesssons, Book V, i (4).  Trans. by Henry Chadwick (1991).  Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 74.

What would happen [...] if we esteemed her even half as much as our forebearers did?

I'll wash your mouth out with soap,
get rid of all the dirty false-god names,
not so much as a whisper of those names again.
(from Hosea, Ch. 2, The Message).