Tell the Truth About the Iron Teeth

This sermon was first preached in Boyd Chapel on Shaw University Divinity School's campus on Saturday, November 12, 2016.  A hermeneutical strategy I'm using here is to take a new look at the heroic figure of Daniel and the confounding images of his visions with a demystifying and humanizing lens.  What if Daniel is a young adult person not so different from us, with real world anxieties and problems as a refugee, an enslaved person from a minority ethnic group? What if Daniel is a person who has complicated vivid dreams (like my sister Jerene and my daughter Naomi), and who in addition to that receives revelation from God through some of them?  My strategy is for the listener, or you the reader, to be able to find yourself close to or even identified with the character Daniel.  Maybe it worked--you be the judge.

Daniel 7:1-20

In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream:

I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion and had eagles’ wings. Then, as I watched, its wings were plucked off, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a human being; and a human mind was given to it.

Another beast appeared, a second one, that looked like a bear. It was raised up on one side, had three tusks in its mouth among its teeth and was told, “Arise, devour many bodies!” After this, as I watched, another appeared, like a leopard. The beast had four wings of a bird on its back and four heads; and dominion was given to it.

After this I saw in the visions by night a fourth beast, terrifying and dreadful and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth and was devouring, breaking in pieces, and stamping what was left with its feet. It was different from all the beasts that preceded it, and it had ten horns. I was considering the horns, when another horn appeared, a little one coming up among them; to make room for it, three of the earlier horns were plucked up by the roots. There were eyes like human eyes in this horn, and a mouth speaking arrogantly.

As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him. The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.

I watched then because of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was speaking. And as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.

As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me. I approached one of the attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would disclose to me the interpretation of the matter:

"As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever--forever and ever."

Then I desired to know the truth concerning the fourth beast, which was different from all the rest, exceedingly terrifying, with its teeth of iron and claws of bronze, and which devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped what was left with its feet; and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, and concerning the other horn that came up, and to make room for which three of them fell out—the horn that had eyes and a mouth that spoke arrogantly, and that seemed greater than the others.

Isaiah 65:17-25

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth;

  the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.

But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating;

  for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,

   and its people as a delight.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem,

  and delight in my people;

no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,

  or the cry of distress.

No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days,

  or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;

for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,

  and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.

They shall build houses and inhabit them;

  they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.

They shall not build and another inhabit;

  they shall not plant and another eat;

for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,

  and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.

They shall not labor in vain,

  or bear children for calamity;

for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD—

  and their descendants as well.

Before they call I will answer,

  while they are yet speaking I will hear.

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,

  the lion shall eat straw like the ox;

   but the serpent--its food shall be dust!

They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,

  says the LORD.

“Tell the Truth About the Iron Teeth”

            I have rarely taught or preached about Daniel.  I grew up in an age and location that overused the book of Daniel.  At every turn, we heard traveling end-times preachers, quoting text after text from Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, filling our minds with horrible images to scare the hell out of us.  Literally.

            Their specialty was to link the images to very specific current events.  One symbol was Russia.  Another symbol was the Chinese Red Army.  Another symbol was the European Common Market.  Some images were nuclear weapons.  They loved to try to count up the numerologies and prove that whatever year we were living in was being predicted in the Bible. They loved grossing us out and scaring us with the idea of blood flowing so deep it was up to the horses’ bellies.

            I eventually theologized my way out of that terroristic preaching.  It was kind of like the boy crying wolf.  How many preachers are going to tell me exactly how history must happen before I start doubting whether they have even a thimbleful of knowledge of God?  How is it that in the story of God’s calling of Israel, it seems like America is turning out to be God’s heroic champion?  Too much sensationalism led eventually, to borrow an image from Daniel, to the handwriting on the wall—they didn’t know what they were talking about.

            So I have avoided Daniel mostly.  I certainly know the stories and remember many of the images.  Yet, it has seemed to me to be a minor book among many giants, and I still hold that to be mostly true.  Even with that judgment, I was drawn to this text as it came up in the lectionary this month.  No small contributor to that interest came because my pastor, Rev. Dr. William C. Turner, Jr., took us into this text last Sunday.  I freely admit that some of what I will say today is shaped by his exposition of the text, as I give it my own slant and perspective.  But I also want to bring to your attention this Sunday’s text from Isaiah 65:17-25.  They are two parts of a single story about this season at the end of the Christian year. 

In these final Sundays, the texts point us to the Reign of Christ, our one true ruler and savior.  That theme is highly relevant in an age of many unworthy rulers and false saviors.  At the midpoint of reading these two texts is a young man shaking with fear.  He has seen in a vision the unfolding of horrific events, monsters destroying whole nations, and that last one seems especially arrogant and cruel, and it has teeth of iron.

I would love to work this text in my usual detail, but we have to get out of here in time for your next class.  So I am going to hold back and try to hit the highlights. 

Daniel is a seer, a dreamer of visions, and he is a devoted worshiper who does not neglect his time of prayer.  He is also a refugee, a forced immigrant, who has been enlisted into forced labor in a high level job under the emperor.  Local people resent him, and they look for ways to do him harm.  Since his youth, he has had a commitment to remember who his momma and daddy are.  He shows an unusual discipline to hold to living the way they raised him.  But we should not be surprised that this vision disturbed him.  He had already survived a horrific invasion and destruction of his homeland.  He was now living among enemies under constant surveillance. 

He didn’t dress, talk, or eat like the people around him. They probably thought his food smelled bad.  They resented his speaking another language.  They thought the way he wore his hair and clothes was an affront.  The least harmful interactions were the side eye and sneer.  Many were outwardly insulting.  People threatened him.  He knew his life was always on an edge.

When he woke up from this dream he was disturbed.  In fact, he was already shaking while he was a character in the dream.  Four great beasts symbolizing four great empires.  The winged lion of Babylon who rose up and walked on two feet like a human.  Then came the bear of Medea, whose usual teeth were not scary enough, but had to have three additional tusks in that mouth to devour many bodies of the nations.  A winged leopard of Persia had four heads, four sets of teeth to devour its prey, and it had dominion over everything.

Those were enough.  They represent the empires Daniel himself would experience.  Babylon would soon fall, and the Medes and Persians would follow one upon the other.  The young man Daniel would grow to be an old man as a captive servant of these conquering empires. 

I’m your professor, so I need to take an aside here to teach.  Some scholars find the book of Daniel to be closely linked to the era of the Maccabean revolt, and they associate the stories of Daniel and the three Hebrew children as exemplary of the discipline the holy rebels will need to overthrow their Greek overlords.  From this point of view, the stories of Daniel are being told by those who look back to his time as an inspiration and guide.  That would mean the writer already knows the history of the four empires, including the Greek empire which came after the book of Daniel comes to an end.  It’s a reasonable theory and one you should study and think about.  But overall, it does not change the impact of what we are examining in this text today.  Whether a vision of future events or a retelling of past events, the theological import is the same.

That fourth monster is almost beyond imagining.  A dragon, crashing its feet as it moves, destroying everything in its path.  It has teeth of iron and ten horns.  The horns start doing some funny stuff, and it really does seem like a dream when a horn on the dragon starts talking.  If I had the time, I would talk with you about Antiochus Epiphanes and the abomination of desolation.  I guess you will have to go look that up in a reputable scholarly work of biblical commentary and criticism.

The parade of monsters is finally interrupted by the appearance of great thrones, and a great, Ancient being enters wearing bright white clothes and having hair all big and wooly.  The throne, well I guess it’s a throne, is made out of fire, and it’s on wheels.  A kind of river of fire flows out, and all around are thousands and ten thousands serving this great one.  Apparently, they are gathering to cast judgment, and the books of the courtroom are being prepared.  The judgment is quick and severe.  The last, most terrifying and loudmouthed monster is destroyed.  The other three monsters lose all their power and dominion.

This is one of those long dreams.  It still isn’t over.  A giant cloud bank is coming, and on it is someone.  It’s someone that looks like a human being.  A plain old human being.  No monster.  No fire chair on wheels.  No giant teeth or horns.  A human figure is riding on the clouds to stand before the Ancient One.  All the power over all things, including all that was taken from the four beasts, gets handed to this human one.  And Daniel learns that this human one will retain dominion forever.

In the dream, all these events had Daniel shook up.  He was troubled in his spirit.  He was terrified by the visions.  So he went to one of the many attendants of the Ancient One to ask what in the heavens was going on.  Especially, Daniel was worried about that fourth beast with iron teeth and ten horns and the new talking horn with eyes.

In this vision of Daniel we get a glimpse into the imagination of another era.  How did they depict great evil and violence?  Huge, powerful, malformed, superpowered beasts, monsters leaving a swath of destruction and death, even eating people, as they move across the land.  For older ones here, it may remind us of the early monster movies about King Kong or Godzilla.  If Daniel were dreaming in our day, he might imagine a giant transformer machine fighter, or a hoard of zombie killers, or vampire armies.  In either era, we find human beings overwhelmed and terrified by the extent of evil and destruction that can occur in our world.  Emperors and armies are depicted as giant monstrous beasts in Daniel’s vision.

There is good reason to display evil in graphic terms.  People’s lives are destroyed by the monsters of lynching.  Mass killings are routine across our country.  Warfare over oil wells and other natural resources bring saturation bombing of towns, improvised explosive devices, and even bombs strapped to the bodies of young people.  Bombs in city streets destroy human bodies and send body parts in all directions.  Drones emerge from nowhere and blow up weddings and hospitals with their targeted missiles.  The violence of conquest and counter-conquest is brutal and monstrous.

Daniel lived on edge in a world of competing empires.  The fall of Jerusalem was one small moment in a centuries-long battle for regional domination.  Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon would soon come under domination of a new world order with succession of destroying armies from Medea, Persia, and Greece.  Off on the distant horizon loomed the most consuming power of all—Rome.  But they aren’t part of Daniel’s vision.

Such strong language to depict evil is not confined to Daniel.  The New Testament brings much of this language into regular use through Paul’s theological depiction of the forces of evil.  We have let bad theology take the iron teeth out of the very real, material evil that devours people’s lives.  Empires and their military might are devastating powers.  The worship of violence as saving power and its ritual enactment of dehumanizing and killing the enemy fuels the fervor of warfare.  Monstrous thirst and lust for blood feeds the sacrosanct idolatrous gods of nationhood.  Paul spoke in ways that should be clear to us—evil becomes structurally embodied in thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, and authorities.  These are words for the ways that human beings organize power in their societies.  But we empty them of this meaning and try to turn them into invisible spirits secretly teasing at our heartstrings.  Thrones are the seats of rulers—rulers who can become tyrants.  Principalities are the regions controlled by princes, who may be despotic and murderous.  Authorities of all sorts exercise domination in our world.

God has made humanity to live orderly lives, and structures of authority are part of God’s good creation.  But there is no assumption in biblical theology that every political structure and every existing ruler is put in place by the hand of God.  Despotic rulers are the enemies of God’s peace and God’s people.  Violent systems of death and domination are opposing God’s purposes for humanity and creation.  Just because someone got appointed king or got elected president does not mean that God put that person there.  God leaves freedom for humanity to seek our own way, and far too often we choose to ignore God’s ways and pursue worldly power and domination rather than shalom and beloved community.  The rise of great and monstrous evil is a turning away from God and a distortion of humanity’s creation and purpose.

Daniel’s vision tells us more than about the dragon with iron teeth.  A crucial element of the vision appears also in the unexpected and vague character who appears at the end.  With so much wild monstrosity coming wave after wave, there appears an image of ultimate power in the Ancient One.  Then, one “like a son of man,” really one who looked like anybody or nobody, a human person, showed up.  Somehow, no doubt equally puzzling to Daniel, all the power and authority of all of these deadly empires, all their territory and peoples, all the language groups and ethnicities, came to be under this nondescript, plain human being.  No one is excluded.  No group is tossed out because of the tint of their skin or the curl of their hair.  No language is deemed unofficial, no artificial boundary is honored, no group is classified as an alien or refugee.  One ruler embraces and welcomes all.  And the new dominion of this one would not be quickly replaced by the next monster.  According to the vision, it would be forever.  Nothing could destroy or defeat this human being’s rule granted by the Ancient One.

Daniel’s vision of a meek and lowly ruler, one with not remarkable features or fancy superpowers, reveals an insight into the work of God that is rooted in the long history of God’s presence in the world and calling of Israel.  God’s election is often surprising in using the less admired person, the smaller or weaker or younger one, even the outsider.  God turns the tables on human ambitions for power and honor.  From Jacob to Joseph to Rahab to Ruth to David, no one would have scripted God’s plan in the way God did it.  Choosing an enslaved people to be the sign of God in the world is not what we would have anticipated. 

Did Daniel have access to the scroll of Isaiah?  Scholars claim that the Book of Isaiah had become one of the most used sacred writings among the Jews in the era of the second temple.  If some of the later portions of Isaiah were still being composed in exile, then the ideas and themes of the book may have been familiar.  The themes of the servant songs of Isaiah show some kinship to this vision of Daniel.  Isaiah 53 says of the servant of God, “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.”  A human person who does not stand out in any particular way.

So in all his experience of tenuous existence and anxiety under imperial power, Daniel probably also had a sense of divine activity to bring an end to the evil machinations of human domination systems.  The Babylonian empire was already showing signs of its demise.  Other empires in the distance were threatening to rise in conquest.  The vision drives home the theological understanding that humanity’s self-made gods are short-lived.  Their days are numbered.  Their compromises with injustice, their inherent viciousness, their deals made with the devil will ultimately bring them down under their own weight of sin.  As the North African theologian Augustine describes in his great volume, The City of God, empires undergo constant revolutions and coups d’etat as one band of robbers comes and defeats another band of robbers to take control.  Evil crops up in human society like weeds, and any show of weakness by one regime will likely be met by an upstart challenger.

The vision offers hope that God will bring an end to this churning and grinding of humanity in the clash of empires.  God will judge the evil that nations and powerful people do.  Their destructive greed will come to an end.  And the one who will replace them all shares with all of us the weakness of a human being.  Through the marvelous and frail human creation, this treasure in earthen vessels, God will bring salvation.  What a wonder!  What a joke on the mighty!  What a flip-flop of human expectation!  What a reversal of all our plans!

Human beings and human societies love power.  We love to follow the toughest football team, the fightingest hockey team, the homerun hitting and strikeout pitching baseball team, the three-point shooting and dunking basketball team.  We admire powerful ships and airplanes, and stand in fearful awe before tanks and cannons.  But it is a misguided awe and admiration.  No giant bear or winged leopard will win in the end.  The iron-toothed dragon, able to chew up even the toughest things in its path, will be put down and replaced by one in appearance as a human being.  A soft-skinned, furless, armorless, easily fatigued, eminently killable creature is the one God elevates to rule in virtue and love.  What a strange and wondrous and mighty God we serve!

Daniel does not have much else to say about what is coming.  The shock of his crazy dream ends with the vision of the human being on the clouds.  If we stretch a bit to look at this week’s text from the prophet Isaiah, we get another imagistic piece of the story of Christ’s Reign.  For Daniel, it is a dramatic reversal, an unexpected elevation of the one who seems least likely to hold dominion and authority, after the world’s all-star team of organized evil does their worst.  Daniel doesn’t try to ask what will be next, or what it will be like.  Maybe he scared himself awake.  The end of the chapter says he could not get it out of his mind.

Isaiah 65:17-25 describes another prophetic vision of a new creation.  The world of violence and domination will pass away.  Where there was destruction and sorrow, there will be joy and flourishing.  Those horrible effects of war, oppression, and poverty will end.  Children won’t die of starvation.  The elderly will see their days extended and enhanced.  The vulnerable are precious to God, and God will act on their behalf.

Moreover, the new creation will bring justice.  People will build houses and grow food in their gardens.  But the emperor or terrorist won’t steal or destroy it.  They will live in the houses they build and eat the food they produce.  They won’t have to fear to bring children into the world.  God is making things right so that we may live with hope and joy.  It will be a time of peace.  The previously monstrous and scary beasts will become peaceful.  Wolves and lambs will play and rest together—this is not a wolf from the horrifying world of Daniel’s dream.  A lion that is hungry will eat vegetation rather than kill.  It is the opposite of the world that Daniel saw coming to an end.  No need for teeth of iron in a world of justice and peace.  None will hurt or destroy.

I’m drawn here to the medieval Latin liturgy and it's recognition of how prophecies like this one in Isaiah anticipate the incarnation:

O magnum mysterium, et admirabile sacramentum (Oh, great mystery and wonderful sacrament)

ut animalia viderent Dominum natum jacentem in praesepio! (that animals should see the newborn Lord placed in a manger!)

Isaiah proclaims to the returning exiles that they can hope for a restoration, a better life than even before, if they will unite themselves to God’s ways.  Jesus, deeply influenced in his theology by the book of Isaiah, embraces this vision of a new creation in which God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  Moreover, Jesus adopts as his own path Isaiah’s depiction of the servant of God, the lowly one who cares for those who suffer and joins them in their struggle.  One has to wonder whether Jesus intentionally linked these two prophetic images when he chose the name son of man or human being to describe himself in his public ministry.  Mortal one, one like us, one with appearance as a human being—that is the one that the Ancient of Days elevates to the highest glory, honor, and power.

With Daniel, we find ourselves living in this in-between place.  Around us we see organized evil of monstrous proportions.  Hate, division, and killing are the coin of the realm.  We live in the world’s most powerful nation, an imperial power with client states and manufacturing colonies all over the world.  What sort of beast would Daniel have seen if the USA were in his dream?  An eagle with the body of a grizzly bear?  A panther with wings of a vulture?  It’s pointless to speculate, but the truth we must recognize is that we live in a nation destined to pass away.  This empire will fall, as all other have, under the weight of its own violence, its genocide, its weapons of mass destruction, and its constant warfare.  Demagogues rise up to stir the base passions of a nation built on white supremacy and slavery.  Hateful men laud their own debasing behavior toward women.  Before the throne of the Ancient One, every tyrant will be judged, found wanting, and brought down.  The momentary victories of unjust powers and dominions will ultimately find their end under the justice of God. 

In the meantime, we wait under the shadow of empire.  We seek the peace of the city where we live, that in its welfare we will also find peace.  We speak truth to power and say, “No,” to the unjust demands of empire.  We live as resident aliens, not of this world, but loving those in the world where, by God’s grace, we take another breath today.  And we rest in the hope of a new creation.  Our destiny is not destruction, but houses, gardens, joyous life together in a land of justice and peace.  Come, Lord Jesus.  May we see your peace and justice break forth anew, even in our lifetimes.  And may we walk in your way of love and care and standing with and for the ones the world has cast aside, as the songwriter Rick Elias says,

For now, we live on these streets,

Forbidding and tough,

Where push always comes to shove,

And it’s said, “Love’s never enough.”

Where a prophet in rags gave hope to a fearful world.

No injustice, no heart of darkness

Will keep this voice from being heard.

He was a man of no reputation,

And by the wise, considered a fool

When he spoke about faith and forgiveness

In a time when the strongest arms ruled.

But this man of no reputation

Loves the weak with relentless affection.

And he loves all us poor in spirit, just as we are.

He was a man of no reputation.

One like a human being, like a son of man, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him, homeless and with no place to lay his head, one you might pass on the street and never notice.  He is our salvation—whom then shall we fear?  If God is for us, who can stand against us?  This one truly reigns, and in Jesus Christ, and in no one else, we place our trust on this day and forevermore.  Amen.

 

Emotions Stirring on Election Day 2016

Yesterday was very busy by my standards.  I was doing communications work for church and community organizing most of the morning.  I had a meeting that lasted an hour and one-half at noon.  Then I had to drive to Raleigh for another meeting at Shaw.  I stayed in my office after that to do some email catching up and get some preparation work done for the faculty retreat.  The next thing I knew, it was after 5:00 pm, dark outside, and the security officer was locking up the building now that all classes were over for the day.

I went on to the car and started the drive home.  The traffic fates had mercy on me, and there were only a few slowdowns with red brake lights shining, so I made good progress.  It's always tempting just to pick a restaurant and buy dinner on the way home, but nobody can afford that all the time.  On the other hand, going to a restaurant by myself gets pretty old.  I had made a plan for supper, and I knew Naomi would need to eat, too.  So I went straight home and started getting dinner on the table:  baked potatoes with Brown & Brummel's yogurt/butter spread and cheese, fresh snow peas, and corn on the cob.  I have to admit, we needed another potato to fill out the meal, so before long I was turning to the "Little Debbie food group" to reach complete satiety.

On that drive home I found myself in a roller coaster of emotions.  Listening to music or listening to news, everything was setting my thoughts off into deep reflections.  Suddenly, without any clear reason, tears welled up, and sent my investigative mind searching for "why?"  Rather than hiding, buried down deep as usual, my feelings stayed thick in my consciousness all the rest of the evening.  I did some more work on a project I'm trying to finish.  I read more up-to-the-minute analysis at the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics websites.  I listened to the song I am supposed to sing lead on this Sunday at Mt. Level.  I read and meditated on lectionary texts from the past few weeks, especially the Prophets.  I chatted with a friend who helps hold me up.  I got a report of one of Everly's cousins' having passed away in hospice.  I listened to more music, finally getting back to one of my fall back artists, Bruce Cockburn.  And this morning, the mood remains.

Identifying why moods come and go is never as easy as I would wish.  If I could find the simple cause and effect, I guess I imagine that I could take charge of this embodied self and put me back on an even keel.  Hanging around long enough, knowing Everly for so long and her far greater familiarity with the stirrings and proddings of emotion, has taught me enough that I don't tend to react with an overwhelming effort to suppress.  My upbringing taught me to own the feelings as mine and stop looking for ways to blame them on something or someone outside of me, and I think I do a fair job of avoiding that.

A situation like this one really comes with a complex set of events and changes going on.  Naomi is in the final lap of finishing her dual masters degrees, and I feel the pressure she is under.  I'm at that point of the semester when all my unfinished work is piling up on me, with deadlines I hope I can meet.  As has often been the case, I puzzle in such times about whether what I am doing now is the best I could be doing for my calling to follow Jesus.  Naomi will be job hunting, and she may soon need to move out of the house we share to take up her calling.  W.D. is living far from all of us in Salado, and I wish there were a simple solution to his not being isolated.  It's quite a few things, and not any one of them.

The uncertainty, volatility, and hatefulness of the election season also takes a toll on me, and I can't help being afraid of what some results might lead to.  I have no delusions of American exceptionalism or divine destiny being fulfilled as the USA becomes the Kingdom of God.  I believe the opposite.  The sins of this nation, piled up, reach to the sky like a tower of Babel.  Trust in false gods of violence and wealth, oppression on every side while most of us enjoy such ease--"Woe to those who are at ease in Zion."  Almost all of the hope I can muster looks to the local possibilities of working for the common good.  At the national and state level, it too often seems like our work is defending people from the worst that leaders can do, holding off the extremes of greed, violence, and indifference.  I've cast my vote toward not stepping deeper into a cesspool of hatred for so many whom God loves, regardless of where they were born or how they pray.  One election can't transform this world into something it has no desire to be, and comparing options for least bad outcomes takes a toll on our hearts if we long for justice and beloved community.  That's my discouragement talking today.

As I write, I realize that four years ago, Everly was able to vote in the election, there in Salado, Texas.  So much has changed since then, and as months pass, the cumulative effects continue to unfold.  My beautiful David, Naomi, and Lydia keep progressing through their adult lives, passing through challenges and victories, and I wish she could touch them and tell them how proud she is and give them little trinkets of her affection.  She can't do that, and she couldn't go to her cousin's bedside, as he did for her in 2013.  His classically Southern name, Ben Tom, to distinguish him from uncles named Ben and Tom and another cousin named Ben, matched perfectly with a gentle, loving Southern way of caring for and encouraging others.  May God receive him in glory and love, and may the family know the presence of God in these days.  I am a witness--God will never leave you or forsake you!

Election days, if we can get ourselves out of the boxing ring and the horse race long enough, are days on which we think about the world that is coming: weeks, months, years ahead.  How do our choices, made in anger and rage or in lust and greed, shape the future lives of child workers in Bangladesh, fast-food workers who have to apply for welfare, and young men and women who will be sent to die for someone's profit margin and vacation home?  May we face this day with appropriate sobriety, and may our hope rest somewhere beyond the battle of Demicans and Republicrats whose record of caring for the poor and outcast, the marginalized and the worker, has been dismal at best.  May those elected catch a glimpse of the grace in which they stand, and may their endurance produce character, and may character give rise to a hope that does not disappoint.  Is it too much to ask?

Body Difference, Discrimination, a Seminary's Founding, and the Gospel

Today, March 16, the Moral Monday Rally convened between the Capitol and the Legislative Building in downtown Raleigh.  In the season of Pentecost, Rev. Barber said, "This is our political Pentecost."  People representing various communities gathered to say with one voice that discrimination against the smallest, least understood minorities is still wrong.  It's not clear whether the Legislators or Governor were among those with ears to hear in their own language.  House Bill #2 targets transgender people whose lives are often endangered by their simple need to use a restroom.  The Charlotte City Council, in the same pattern as Columbia and Charleston and Myrtle Beach, SC, sought to make life safer and fairer for them, but HB2 reversed that local ordinance.

There is much confusion and misinformation on this legislation.  Some of the confusion comes from the misrepresentation of the bill as primarily about bathrooms.  It is much farther reaching than that, affecting minimum wages and access to courts for those enduring discrimination.  It's easy to spread misinformation on a subject that most people know very little about and even fewer understand.  To be transgender is a complicated and often socially rejected existence that people would not choose on a whim.  Complex biological causes shape the lives of each of us from the earliest stages of gestation, and the timing and presence or absence of certain developmental processes can lead to a great variety of sexual variation and differences in brains and bodies.  But the implication that sexual predators are facilitated by protecting transgender persons, or that transgender persons should be classified as sexual predators, has no basis in fact.

At least one of my friends and fellow ministers brings to the conversation a deep concern for young women and girls, many of whom she has met in juvenile detention centers, whose lives have been marked by sexual and physical abuse from men, often men who should have been their protectors as family or friends.  She speaks of their fear of being in a private, vulnerable place such as a bathroom, when men might also be present.  She is not making this up, and we know that women, especially young women and girls, are also among the most victimized in our society.  These previously harmed women deserve friendship, love, and protection, not further harm.

Yet I do not believe that HB2, by preventing laws like the Charlotte anti-discrimination ordinance, is making the world safer for girls and young women.  The statistics that we already know about rape and sexual abuse of women have come about before and without relevance to laws preventing discrimination against transgender persons.  Moreover, transgender women forced to use men's restrooms are among the most likely victims of sexual violence and assault.  The Charlotte ordinance aims to add protections for a vulnerable group.  Male sexual predators hoping to find victims by dressing as women to enter a women's bathroom will do so whether or not there is a law to protect transgender persons.  HB2 does not make life safer for any women, whether transgender or not.

So I was glad to have the opportunity on April 25 to be one of the parade of speakers against HB2 at the Moral Monday Rally.  I was one of about five clergy of various faiths--Muslim, Jewish, and Christian--to speak out for repeal of HB2.  There between the political buildings and the museums, we gathered to do our civic and moral duty to speak on behalf of those who face injustice at the hands of lawmakers, state power, and financial power.  Upholding the heritage of my institutional home, the oldest historically black college in the South, the oldest historically black theological school in the South, Shaw University Divinity School, I framed my remarks to faithfully represent that heritage.

Some of you may know from experience that public speaking to call public servants to accountability requires a certain kind of discipline.  I was told to keep my remarks to two minutes.  As one who often preaches more in the range of 45 to 50 minutes, I have had to learn to also develop the two, three, or four minute address when at public events.  My first draft ran about 2:55 as I practiced it, and that was without introducing myself and my institution, which adds another 15 to 20 seconds.  So I made some cuts and got it down to about 1:50 or so.  The actual delivery, with my nervousness, was a bit slower, and ran 2:40 or so.  I still think I gave the shortest speech of the day.

Below, I will type out the full draft of my remarks, which includes more than I actually said on that day.  Then I will include the video clip of my speech, with the version that was edited down to keep it shorter.  I know this is a controversial topic.  As one minister said before I spoke, the difference of convictions is not between a faith position and a non-faith position.  The difference is between more than one faith position, between more than one non-faith position.  Thus, within the faith conversation, we must seek the most compelling, authoritative, and convincing arguments for what we bear witness to as truth.  I pray that you will find reason to consider these remarks I make as you agree or disagree with my commitment to repealing HB2.

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In 1865, Henry Martin Tupper, the founder of Shaw University, began offering the first Bible classes of that institution to formerly enslaved students.  They met in a hotel located right here where the North Carolina Museum of History now stands.  Tupper understood that society must not systematically shut out some of its members from education, a livelihood, or the basic goods of life because their bodies are different.  He was following in the tradition of prophetic faith passed on by Jesus, a poor, marginalized, Jewish rabbi under the domination of Rome. 

Shaw’s great scholar Albert W. Pegues, leader of the Theological Department which would become Shaw University Divinity School, himself said that the only path for North Carolinians to take out of their oppressive past must “put in practice principles of right and justice as taught in the Bible.”

       When Jesus stood up in the synagogue to announce his plans for ministry, he began by challenging the power structures that would count out some people as unworthy.  First he named the poor, who with all their struggles to live needed some good news.  He named those who had become wage slaves in a harsh economy.  He named prisoners warehoused in jails. 

But he also named those marginalized, ignored, cast aside, and thrown away because of differences in their bodies.  On that day it was the blind.  On other days he met the lame, the deaf, the chronically ill, people of different ethnicity, like Samaritans, even eunuchs who were people with genital differences. He met these people every day, sitting by the side of the road, placed downtown in a plaza with a pool of water, forced to live outside of town as unclean, shunned to their own place away from respectable society.

Too often, even the most holy-acting religious people despised and rejected others for their differences.  They even tried to boost their power by using labels to inspire fear, like “sinners.”  They classified those people whose bodies were different by claiming their bodies to be signs of God’s punishment. 

But the truth of God’s love for all creation is that in all our differences, we still come from one blood, one divinely beloved humanity.  HB2 plays on fears and hate of differences to divide us, to hurt us, to tempt us to turn away from the truth at the core of our faith.  But faculty and students of the fledgling Shaw University did not quit when faced with divisive hate, threats, bullets, and all manner of efforts to make them give up.  We still are not going to give up.  Repeal this unjust law!

Fugitives from Injustice

The practice of preaching involves lots of listening and learning from others preachers.  There is lots of borrowing and using of preached materials--one wishes more of the borrowing and using included credit given where credit is due.  I don't deny that my preaching is shaped by many influences.  This sermon, in particular, depends heavily on the debt I owe to my friend J. Kameron Carter.

I have been blessed by his friendship in many ways.  As dads, we have supported and prayed with one another through the task of knowing how best to love our children as the gifts from God that they are.  As workers, we have hashed and rehashed, chewed over and stewed over the ups and downs of employment and collegial relationships on the respective plantations where we find ourselves earning a paycheck.  As theologians, we have run our current ideas by one another over coffee in conversations that seem to open up into so many vistas that there is never a good stopping point.

One such conversation that has gone on across many months is his reflection on Christology, engaging social theorists and classical Christian texts, from which he has been exploring the notion of fugitivity, of Jesus as fugitive.  As Jay might say, "dat joint has worked on me."  On this conversation, mostly I have listened.  My contributions have mostly been around my own efforts to understand Jesus' relationship with John the Baptist, his ministry under the constant threat of assassination, and his reactions to the political murder of John by Herod.

Finally, I felt compelled to try to think within this framing of Christology that has occupied many hours of coffee drinking.  I put it into the form of a sermon for chapel service at Shaw University Divinity School.  I first preached this sermon on Saturday, March 12, 2016.  Thank you, Brother J, for your generous teaching into the life of your friend.

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Mark 6:12-16

12So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. 13They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

             14King Herod heard of it, for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” 15But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” 16But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”

John 4:1-4

1Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John” — 2although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized— 3he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4But he had to go through Samaria.

John 7:10-14, 25-26, 30-36

10But after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were in secret. 11The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying, “Where is he?” 12And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds. While some were saying, “He is a good man,” others were saying, “No, he is deceiving the crowd.” 13Yet no one would speak openly about him for fear of the Jews.

             14About the middle of the festival Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach….

            25Now some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, “Is not this the man whom they are trying to kill? 26And here he is, speaking openly, but they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Messiah?...

            30Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come. 31Yet many in the crowd believed in him and were saying, “When the Messiah comes, will he do more signs than this man has done?”

             32The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering such things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent temple police to arrest him. 33Jesus then said, “I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. 34You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.” 35The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? 36What does he mean by saying, ‘You will search for me and you will not find me’ and ‘Where I am, you cannot come’?”

Fugitives from Injustice

            This week at the Ministers Conference, Dr. John Kinney gave thanks that he has worked in a place that he can continue to learn by regularly engaging with students.  If we are faithful to God, we will keep on learning and having to change our minds.  I can agree wholeheartedly.  In the current Lenten season, as we seek to journey with Jesus and learn through his life what sort of lives we should live, I find myself going back into studies and sermons from my past to dig deeper.  How did Jesus’ life change when John the Baptist was executed?  What was it like for Jesus to continue to do his important work while under the shadow of death threats and people plotting against him?  How can learning about Jesus’ endangered life reshape my vision of the church and ministry in this critical time?

            The texts we looked at today, drawn from two different gospels, provide us pieces of a story.  It seems likely that a fuller version of how these stories fit together was well-known to people who through word of mouth passed down their remembrances of the activities and sayings of Jesus.  While it is not possible to piece together a definitive chronology of Jesus’ ministry years, the fragments we do have make evident certain patterns and relationships between events.  We can see more than mere suggestions of Jesus’ mode of life.  We see his strategic engagements of confrontation and withdrawal and his habits of prophetic witness and pragmatic self-preservation.

            Although the four Gospels provide different accounts of the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry, it seems clear that even in the early stages of his work he began to face serious conflicts.  John describes confrontations with the leaders in Jerusalem and their response in the form of persecution.  Under this state of affairs, Nicodemus avoided meeting Jesus publicly in the light of day.  Although the synoptic gospels do not describe an early ministry in Jerusalem, they convey a similar atmosphere of conflict early in Jesus’ ministry. 

             Matthew describes the harsh words John used in criticizing the Pharisees and Sadducees, and then shows Jesus continuing John's pattern in the first major discourse section, commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount.  Highlighting the shortcomings of the religious elite, the wealthy, and the powerful could not have won him many friends among those groups.  Mark gives account of how Jesus’ fame spread rapidly, drawing both fans and critics in greater numbers.  When he healed a paralytic and said, “Your sins are forgiven,” some began to accuse him of blasphemy.  He stood his ground and won over the crowd, much to the chagrin of his critics.  When Jesus called a tax collector to be one of his close followers, Pharisees began to challenge him for associating with outcasts, only to have Jesus stand up to them for turning their noses up at his friends.  Luke famously tells of Jesus’ invitation to preach in the synagogue in Nazareth, where he makes the leaders so angry they try to kill him.  Thus, we should be fairly certain that from the early stages of his public life, Jesus was in conflict with the powerful people in his world who began to plot his demise.

As the passage from Mark indicates, Jesus’ aggressive teaching and work among the people eventually gets the attention of Herod, and not in a beneficial way.  Herod, troubled by his shameless murder of John the Baptist, seems driven by his guilty conscience to believe that Jesus is in fact John raised from the dead.  Herod’s paranoia becomes a fast-spreading topic of conversation, eventually getting back to Jesus and his disciples.  We have no reason to doubt that Jesus had been deeply affected by the murder of his cousin and mentor.  Knowing the hatred Herod and his family had for John, Jesus could easily deduce that Herod would be coming for him next, and the stories of Herod’s suspicion confirmed there was reason for fear.

Thus the fourth chapter of the fourth gospel tells a story of Jesus making a rapid retreat to Galilee.  Unlike some more bigoted Jews of his day, he did not take the roundabout Transjordan route through Perea.  Jesus did not share the same prejudice, and he was in a hurry to get away from those who were plotting to harm him, so he took a path straight through Samaria toward the cosmopolitan Galilean region where he could move more freely with less surveillance and fewer threats.

If we can accept some version of the timeline offered by the fourth gospel, then Jesus seems to have made multiple trips to Jerusalem, and perhaps across several years of public ministry.  The last passage we read describes one such trip which was cloaked in secrecy.  First, he told his brothers that he would not go.  But later, he sneaked into the great city and avoided being noticed for a while.  Eventually, he started coming out in public and getting into confrontations.  He seems to have had to go back into hiding from day to day, or even from hour to hour, because people were openly plotting to arrest and kill him.  He intentionally engaged them in argument, then slipped away before they could grab him. 

The gospel says, “his time had not yet come.”  In other words, he was not ready to be caught.  He was not ready to interrupt the subversive work he was doing throughout the countryside and from town to town.  He was not ready to be torn away from his close friends and his large crowd of followers.  They were part of a mass movement, and momentum was building.  He was making progress and wanted to see it through.  So his time had not yet come.  He was not ready to push the conflict toward its possible conclusion.  So he told them that even thought they would look for him, they would not find him.  He eluded their grasp and left them confused.

To borrow a term from my coworker and friend in ministry, J. Kameron Carter, Jesus was a fugitive.  He had taken on a fugitive mode of life.  As a fugitive, he was pursued by the powerful and their agents of police control.  He had become an enemy of the state, persona non grata, an undesirable, unwelcome in the synagogue or temple, a threat to the social order, a subverter of economic progress.

He was Trayvon taking a short cut through the neighborhood.  He was Michael or Rekia walking down the street.  He was Sandra driving into a new town where she was not known.  He was Renisha or Jonathan on a porch, knocking on a door to ask for help, outside their neighborhoods.  He was walking while black, driving while black, living while black—unable to be carefree and at ease in his life.  He had no place to lay his head.  He was living under suspicion, always at the edge of danger, ever aware of the threat to end his existence.

He was forced into constant watchfulness, powered by anxiety, as were those who had escaped slavery into the northern states during the era of slavocracy.  Although they had entered into territory which should have made them free, the perversity of white supremacy had allowed the Fugitive Slave Law to require citizens and police of the northern states to catch, detain, and return slaves.  The corrupt profitability of trade in human flesh meant that even free blacks were in danger of being falsely accused of escaping and forced to go south and be enslaved. Slave catchers and informers could be anywhere.  Fugitivity was the condition of life for escaped slaves.  The danger to black persons even today when they cross out of their assigned neighborhoods maintains a disturbing similarity to the Fugitive Slave Law system.  And yet by living in this fugitive condition, their very bodies announced the truth of a counterpolitical social order.  The truth of their existence was freedom.  The lie was slavery.

For Jesus to be a fugitive required in part that he keep a low profile.  It was not that he remained hidden away in a cave or a back room.  The gospel accounts tell us that he was regularly surrounded by crowds who went searching for him when he escaped their presence for a brief time.  In fact, it seems clear that he often found it hard to rest because of the constant barrage of people wanting to meet him, to hear him teach, or to be touched or healed by him.  Jesus was a revolutionary presence in his world.  People’s expectations were sky high.  And this popularity and fame is what was at the same time forcing him into a fugitive life.

Carter says that this fugitive life of Jesus constitutes a “zone of the new humanity.”  Jesus was enacting through his atoning life the model of social existence to which the church is also called.  It is a life that pursues a different purpose from that of the ruling powers.  Its end, its goal, the Reign of God, is a social order not authorized by the existing power structures and worldly economic and political order.  To the extent that churches or other religious systems accommodate themselves to the status quo, to the interests of the current regime and its overreaching power, they align themselves against the fugitive way of Jesus.  They take on the neocolonial role of the Sadducees, Herodians, and Pharisees, as supporters of structures of domination who gladly take their elite position just below the officials of the colonizing power structure imposed by the Roman empire.  Churches need to stop being that kind of auxiliary to empire.

Carter further says of the fugitive Jesus,

His mode of life, the way he lived, was fugitive from the order of things.  He cared for the poor, fed the hungry, hung out with menaces to society, refused to judge according to our measure of judgment (indeed, his judgment was against all judgment); he worked on the Sabbath, doing good and healing the sick even and especially on that day.  This was his mode of life, his way of being human.  And it was a threat….He was the quintessential enemy to both the religious order of things and, especially, to Roman imperial society.  And because of this there was massive collusion to kill him by his Jewish compatriots, Roman/Gentile society, and even within the fold of his followers, the disciples.  (David Kline & J. Kameron Carter, “Race, Theology, and the Politics of Abjection: An Interview with J. Kameron Carter, Part I,” The Other Journal, March 26, 2012.)

The forces which made Jesus into a fugitive, the empire and its lackeys, had a deadly purpose.  The fugitive Savior was not playing a friendly game of hide and seek.  The consequences of his fugitive ways were likely to cost him his life.  And of course, they did.           

            One hundred fifty-one years ago, not too far away from where we gather today, former slaves hunched down, sometimes having to hide among the crops in the field to dodge bullets that still would fly in their direction.  They were gathered together to study the Bible and theology, in the rudimentary formation of what would become Shaw University Divinity School.  Although by proclamation and by terms of surrender, they were free persons under the law, by actual conditions their efforts at betterment and uplift put them in danger of harm at the hands of those who wished for them to remain enslaved. 

            They were a fugitive people following the way of the fugitive Jesus.  As Kelly Brown Douglas notes, they were aware that the prophet’s claim that “My ways are not your ways” brought divine judgment on the slavocracy and its religious cheerleaders.  The so-called Christianity of the master class denied the truth of the gospel, leading our forbears to conclude that “everybody talking about heaven ain’t going there.”  In a world where human flesh is bought and sold, where a person’s body becomes another persons tool for profit or pleasure, where families can be broken apart by cruel commercial calculation, the first students at the Raleigh Institute understood that to follow Jesus was to disavow the social order.  The world needed to be turned upside down, and they were fugitives struggling to overthrow a perverse and corrupt social order.

             Like Jesus, they needed to stay alive long enough to do what they were called to do.  Also like Jesus, they would have to be willing to stare down a deadly system of power, and in doing so keep putting their lives in danger of violence, imprisonment, or death.  It might seem to be a useless plan of life, a hopeless struggle against insurmountable odds.  Why not find a way to fit in?  Why not trade away some dignity for survival, accept limited freedom in exchange for passivity?  But that was not the conclusion they reached.  They were, instead, the vanguard of a new order living under the conditions of fugitivity.  They embraced their fugitive lives because they served a risen Savior.

As Carter explains, Jesus’ fugitive life was not a mere isolated moment.  He was not a tiny, passing blip on the radar of human existence.  The movement he built in his fugitive life grew toward a tipping point.  Eventually, he pressed his fugitivity toward a full-scale confrontation.  Having demonstrated the truth about human existence, the truest way of living, he went toe-to-toe with his enemies. 

Unlike them, he refused a violent solution.  He turned his followers away from the idea of overthrowing one domination system in order to reinstate another one in which they could be the ruling elite.  He shut down his friends’ efforts to kill or harm their opponents, and offered healing even to the ones who would arrest him.  In other words, he was faithful to the end in refusing to live the life of worldly domination. 

Caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, befriending prisoners, loving each neighbor (even the ones who are enemies)—this was his mode of life even until the end.  Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.  Believing that the way of love is the true path to joy and fulfillment, he fixed his gaze on the joy that was set before him.  That was how he could endure the cross and despise its shame.  For his followers, it seemed that his arrest and execution was the end of their hopes.  But they were wrong.

Jesus became a fugitive from his tomb.  In vindication of his faithful life, God raised him from the dead.  Through the resurrection, we may be united to Jesus in his fugitivity.  We may along with Jesus live in contradiction to the domination systems of this world which would deny that black lives matter.  We may reject the respectability politics that tell us the world will accept us and reward us if we will merely follow its rules and avoid rocking the boat.  There is an outcry today among young people who look upon a world in which the government and the corporation and the church have turned their backs on them.  Following the rules is not working.  Trivial traffic stops can quickly turn to life and death situations through no reasonable cause.  Stop and frisk policies make the prejudice of the enforcer adequate reason for a beat down.  When they speak up in their own defense, they are met with militarized policing; they are fired for pointing out unjust wages and organizing workers; they are labeled as lost and narcissistic and unreachable.  They have become outcast in their own homeland, and then blamed for bringing it on themselves.

The church cannot concede to respectability politics.  The world’s interests and purpose are not our interests and purpose.  We follow a fugitive Savior.  If we are to be the body of Christ, we must live in that resurrected fugitive mode.  Going along to get along is not an option.  Carter argues that we can understand Jesus’ death and its atoning power as his descending “right into zone of death, the fallenness of the creature. His death witnessed to a [fugitive] mode of life, and his resurrection was an affirmation of that mode of life; a distinct way of being human was complete and full and utterly accomplished in him” (Carter, ibid.).

United to him in his atoning life, death, and resurrection, we also become participants in this mode of life as fugitives from the regimes of this world, from the established ordering of society.  We take up a revolutionary way, a subversion of the oppressive, violent ways of this world.  We are made new, and as a cadre of the new creation, we press toward the overthrow of corrupted, perverse systems of death.  We do so with prophetic witness and pragmatic perseverance. 

As Dr. Gina Stewart proclaimed concerning the ending of the Gospel of Mark, we receive the news of the resurrection as a shocking awakening to the breaking in of a world of love and justice.  The women at the tomb received an assignment to organize the disciples and meet up with Jesus in Galilee.  They did not run around making a ruckus and provoking a new crackdown on Jesus’ followers, but they worked carefully and faithfully to build a movement ready to go public.  Ultimately, they got their marching orders from the fugitive Savior.  They strengthened themselves for the struggle ahead.  Behind closed doors, they built trust and community.  The made strategic plans and considered alternatives.  They deepened their resolve to give their lives fully to God.  They looked out for one another. 

Then one day there was a sound as a rushing mighty wind.  They were filled with power as the Holy Spirit came upon them.  They went out and filled the streets.  They proclaimed the coming of a new world order.  They saw it breaking in.  They saw the “powers that be” taken aback and confused. 

And they demonstrated for us, heirs of their movement centuries down the way, that we also may become fugitives from the regimes of this world in the struggle to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.  Amen.