First I read a bunch of the more interesting commentaries on the assigned lectionary passage. And usually nothing happens. No sermon ideas—although every once in a while a word or a phrase or a sentence triggers a sermon. After spending a day with the commentaries, I put their careful exegesis aside and take a look at the theological section of my bookshelves. I take a book off the shelf, look at the table of contents, maybe flip through the pages to find my pencil markings, read a little here and there. And usually something happens. A sermon idea is born. So, here’s some stuff from random books that I’m hoping will turn into a sermon at some point in the next few days.

Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, p. 173:

For the Holy Spirit is the sovereign unction resting upon the Christ and upon all the Christians called to reign with Him in the age to come. It is then that this divine Person, now unknown, not having His image in another Hypostasis, will manifest Himself in deified persons: for the multitude of the saints will be His image.

Christ displays time-friendly virtues in the course of his life, primarily a lack of anxiety about it: his ministry starts late and ends early, and he is willling to undergo death: in these concrete ways he counts timelessness not a a thing to be grasped, but humbles himself, giving the initiative over to the Spirit, already at his baptism, but especially by his death, so that over great stretches of time, much longer than a human life, the Spirit can give additional unexpected gifts of people and holiness to the Son. Only by retiring from the scene, and sending the Spirit, can the Son pass on his ministry without grasping time, without seeking to live forever; only by withdrawing on behalf of the Spirit can the Son put death behind him. The Son gives his life in trusting the Spirit before all Isreal has come in, allowing himself to ‘fail’ as Messiah, and the Spirit gives the unexpected and peculiar gift of the mostly Gentile church.

If there can be any sense in which ‘Spirit’ is a bridge-concept, its work is not to bridge the gap between God and teh world or even between teh Word and the human soul, but to span the unimaginably greater gulf between suffering and hope, and to do so by creating that form of human subjectivity capable of confronting suffering without illusion but also without despair…. Spirit is active where broken flesh and shed blood become the sign and promise of human wholeness and union with the Father.

The gift was not of something they came to possess, but something that came to possess them. It was not that they were given a new religious attitude, but tha tthey were taken over, possessed by, the Holy Spirit. The joy of God became, indeed, their joy; but it was first he joy of God.... This, St. Luke is telling us in Acts, is what the Church is supposed to be about: it is the proclamation in the world of the presence of the Spirit of delight and love, the Spirit of the joy of God, and the peace of God which will transform this world and take it beyond itself to the kingdom of the risen Christ, our brother, in whom is the interplay in love between god the eternal Parent, God the eternal Child, the God of eternal Joy and Delight, the interplay of Father, Son , and Holy Spirit for eternity.

Politics involves all the ways we tend to the common good. This happens in our neighborhoods, not just in Washington. For Coles and Hauerwas, democracy is everyday politics that turns us to the importance of “concrete practices of tending to one another.”

Coles describes the civil rights movement as a story of this kind of everyday democracy. He focuses our attention on the ordinary African-American churchwomen who gave Martin Luther King Jr. a movement to talk about. Ella Baker is the protagonist of this story. She was a political organizer who spread the civil rights movement among everyday folk. According to Coles, Baker’s politics displayed “the arts and the techniques of ‘sitting at the feet’ of the least of these.” These relationships turned into political networks that birthed life in the midst of suffering.

Baker’s democratic politics started at the kitchen table and community meals. For Coles, with whom we eat is as politically significant as what we do in the voting booth. Meals of communion fuel political imagination.

So I flipped through a book I read a few years ago: Nicholas Lash, A Matter of Hope: A Theologian’s Reflections on the Thought of Karl Marx (1984). According to Lash, Marx insists that a human being’s “fundamental relationship to reality is to be sought in the transformative character of human labour... Man is part of material reality (even if he is not ‘only’ that), and it is in ‘working’ that reality of which he is a part, with his hands and his eyes, his muscles and his mind, that he is able to become himself in reality and reflection, in life and in though” (103). Marx says it all in a pithy sentence: “Man produces himself through work.”

Since Lash is a theologian, he can’t help but bring Christ’s work into the picture. This is a beautiful passage: “The ‘work’ of Christ consisted in his obedience to, his unswerving trust in, the silence he called ‘Father’.... Good Friday was not the unfortunate disruption of his preaching. It was the execution of that which his preaching proclaimed: God’s transformative fidelity to his creation…. To believe in Christ’s resurrection is to believe that Jesus’ dying into God, his enactment of dependency on God was, as dying into God, as the enactment of dependency on God, the achievement of his freedom, his identity, his eternity” (193).

Now my task is to see if there’s a sermon in here somewhere…

Prayer is a grace, an offer of God. (13)

To be a Christian and to pray are one and the same thing; it is a matter that cannot be left to our caprice. It is a need, a kind of breathing necessary to life. (15)

Saying to God ‘Thy kingdom come’ presupposes that those who pray know this kingdom, this life, this justice, this newness, this reconciliation; they know that all this is not foreign to them. They must know it, and when they pray in these words, the kingdom must already have come. (36)

‘Born of Mary.’ Once again and now from the human standpoint the male is excluded here. The male has nothing to do with this birth. What is involved here is, if you like, a divine act of judgment. To what is to begin here man is to contribute nothing by his action and initiative. man is not simply excluded, for the Virgin is there. But the male, as the specific agent of human action and history, with his responsibility for directing the human species, must now retire into the background, as the powerless figure of Joseph. That is the Christian reply to the question of woman: here the woman stands absolutely in the foreground, moreover the virgo, the Virgin Mary. God did not choose man in his pride and his defiance, but man in his weakness and humility, not man in his historical role, but man in weakness of his nature as represented by the woman, the human creature who can confront God only with the words, ‘Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according as Thou hast said.’.... God has regarded man in his weakness and in his humility, and Mary has expressed what creation alone can express in this encounter. That Mary does so and that thereby the creature says ‘Yes’ to God, is a part of the great acceptance which comes to man from God.

This interest led me to Brian Wicker’s book, Culture and Liturgy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963). It’s a blur of a read. He covers a lot of distance at high speeds—from Thomas Aquinas to D.H. Lawrence in a matter of sentences. The work of Raymond Williams seems to connect the dots.

I can’t say that I would recommend to book. I didn’t find it too interesting, other than giving me a window into the world of Slant. But I thought I should remember a few passages, and so I’ll share them below.

He’s refreshingly honest about the interconnections between church and society:

Any view of the Church as a lonely island of fidelity, morality or spirituality in a surrounding sea of corruption, faithlessness and materialism is liable to degenerate into the vision of a similar split between the Church and the world which, in a real sense, nourishes her. (32)

The fact is that, outside Marxism, it is only a profound Christian theology rooted in the idea of ‘salvation history’ as the key to history itself, which can restore the idea of social progress to its legitimate position in our culture. (35)

Since the liturgical assembly is the ever-present manifestation of God’s creative act in calling the people of God into existence, it is his own society. Thus, which all human society is the work of his creation, the liturgical assembly is especially so, as being the human vehicle of salvation history. It must therefore be seen by Christians as the paradigm of all human society and its constitution as the norm of all other, more ephemeral forms of human association. It is this fact which makes the history of salvation relevant to the immediate problem of society, by offering us, in the liturgical assembly, a model or prototype for us to use in trying to make the results in society as a whole. (44)

The social action of the Church is not limited to the remedy of injustices, but is deeply embedded in her mission to teach and baptize. (59)

The Liturgy, as I have said, is, theologically speaking, a world which stands midway between the experience of ordinary life and the complete future consummation of life in the supernatural society of the eternal Kingdom. (182)

The Liturgy is the acting out of the biblical drama; but this acting out is nothing other than the reading of the Bible and the pursuit in action of what has been understood dramatically. The stage swallows up the auditorium so that we are all gathered up into the world created by the dramatist, who is God. (192)

Crucial for me is the presumption that the gospel is a story meant to train us to live without explanation. Explanation presumes that if I can just account for why what happened did happen, then I will be able to live with what has happened… I think Christianity is the training for learning how to live without being in control: you learn to live in the silences, and you learn what the politics of living in the silences might look like… But to learn patiently in a world where you have no answers, it seems to me, gives you political alternatives that otherwise would not exist—through hope… I assume that God will show up in all different kinds of ways. That’s how I try to conceive of what it means to live hopefully without explanation. You don’t try to explain the death of a child. That will kill you. That will kill you.

At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it.  And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.

According to these verses man is constant in his wicked inconstancy. This is just what God is not. God is consistently one and the same. but again His consistency is not as it were mathematical. It is not the consistency of a supreme natural law or mechanism. the fact that He is one and the same does not mean that He is bound to be and say and do only one and the same thing, so that all the distinctions of His being, speaking and acting are only a semblance, only the various refractions of a beam of light which are eternally the same. This was  and is the way that every form of Platonism conceives God. It is impossible to overemphasise the fact that here, too, God is described as basically without life, word or act. Biblical thinking about God would rather submit to confusion with the grossest anthropomorphism than to confusion with this the primary denial of God. In biblical thinking God is certainly the immutable, but as the immutable He is the living God and He possesses a mobility and elasticity which is no less divine than his perseverance no less than its own divinity naturally requires confirmation by His divine perseverance. (496)... Yet it would not be a glorifying, but a blaspheming and finally a denial of God, to conceive of the being and essence of this self-consistent God as one which is, so to speak, self-limited to an inflexible immobility, thus depriving God of the capacity to alter His attitudes and actions… He is not prevented from advancing and retreating, rejoicing and mourning, laughing and complaining, being well pleased and causing His wrath to kindle, hiding or revealing Himself. (498)

God’s high freedom in Jesus Christ is His freedom for love. The divine capacity which operates and exhibits itself in that superiority and subordination is manifestly also God’s capacity to bend downwards, to attach Himself to another and this other to Himself, to be together with him… God’s deity is thus no prison in which He can exist only in and for Himself… It is when we look at Jesus Christ that we know decisively that God’s deity does not exclude, but includes His humanity. (48-49)

In this divinely free volition and election, in this sovereign decision (the ancients said, in His decree), God is human. His free affirmation of man, His free concern for him, His free subsitution for him—this is God’s humanity… In the mirror of this humanity of Jesus Christ the humanity of God enclosed in His deity reveals himself. (51)

For those who may know a lot about this document, I’d be interested to read your comments.

It’s important to notice that the document doesn’t reveal a Church with it’s head in the sand. The authors are quite aware of the desperate needs of the poor and oppressed through the world, and particularly those in Latin America. And it roots it’s cry for the oppressed in the Scriptures, places like Amos and the prophets: The prophets “threaten the powerful: the accumulation of evils can only lead to terrible punishments. Faithfulness to the Covenant cannot be conveived of without the practice of justice. Justice as regards God and justice as regards mankind are inseparable. God is the defender and the liberator of the poor” (IV.6). It doesn’t get more explicit that that: God is the defender and the liberator of the poor. And the document isn’t shy about naming some of the evils that create a world that makes people poor:

The scandal of the shocking inequality between the rich and poor – whether between rich and poor countries, or between social classes in a single nation – is no longer tolerated. On one hand, people have attained an unheard of abundance which is given to waste, while on the other hand so many live in such poverty, deprived of the basic necessities, that one is hardly able even to count the victims of malnutrition. (I.6)

The lack of equity and of a sense of solidarity in international transactions works to the advantage of the industrialized nations so that the gulf between the rich and the poor is ever widening. Hence derives the feeling of frustration among third world countries, and the accusations of exploitation and economic colonialism brought against the industrialized nations. (I.7)

The Congregation also remembers the terrorizing and wasteful military-industrial complex that rich countries harbor as they continue to manufacture and sell advanced killing devices. This is an especially appropriate word given the negotiation of a $20 billion US arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

The Apostolic See, in accord with the Second Vatican Council, and together with the Episcopal Conferences, has not ceased to denounce the scandal involved in the gigantic arms race which, in addition to the threat which it poses to peace, squanders amounts of money so large that even a fraction of it would be sufficient to respond to the needs of those people who want for the basic essentials of life. (I.9)

Faced with the urgency of certain problems, some are tempted to emphasize, unilaterally, the liberation from servitude of an earthly and temporal kind. They do so in such a way that they seem to put liberation from sin in second place, and so fail to give it the primary importance it is due.” (prologue)

Maybe the most significant part of the document is it’s condemnation of “Marxist Analysis” (that’s the title of the longest section, part VII). The problem, as the Congregation sees it, is that Marxism claims to be a science, to be empirical, but it is in fact rooted in an ideology. And, as they put it, “If one tries to take only one part, say, the analysis, one ends up having to accept the entire ideology” (VII.6). The point is a simple one: there’s no such thing as neutral science. And Marxism presents its science while hiding its ideology. Gustavo Gutierrez respectfully disagreed with Cardinal Ratzinger and the Congregation on this point. Gutierrez responds with an influential article, “Teologia y ciencias sociales” (translated and published in The Truth Shall Make You Free). He makes the basic point that it is important for theology to engage with social science (of which Marxism is an important part) if the gospel will have anything to say to everyday lives of so many people who suffer. And it is in fact possible to use Marxism and other social sciences critically. “The presence of the social sciences in theology at the point when it is important to have a deeper understanding of the concrete world of human beings does not imply an undue submission of theological reflection to something outside it. Theology must take into account the contribution of social sciences, but in its work it must always appeal to its own sources” (Essential Writings, p. 49).

A brief aside: That famous Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder, participated in the emerging liberation theology of Latin America. Through is ecumenical work, he was invited to speak at theological gatherings in South America where the liberationist agenda was a priority. In his essay, “Biblical Roots of Liberation Theology” (Grail 1.3, Sept 1985), Yoder spells out the (necessary?) link between liberation theology and Marx:

So it was Helder Camara himself a few years ago…who noted how Aquinas made us of Aristotelian categories in order to organize medieval Christian thought. Camara added that today’s Aristotle is Marx. Marx gives us the categories; we we have to Christianize them, adapt them, give them new content. We must take the categories of our age and do with Marx what Aquinas did with Aristotle: we must use him for Christian purposes. (72)

When the Christian separates himself in spirit from their miserable society, he should take this treasure with him for the just use of teaching the gospel. And their clothing, which is made up of those human institutions which are accommodated to human society and necessary to the conduct of life, should be seized and held to be converted to Christian uses.

Sure, the document roots theological reflection in the Bible. But it adds a qualification that assumes interpretive authority: “an authentic theology of liberation will be one which is rooted in the Word of God, correctly interpreted” (VI.7). And, as everyone knows, the site of correct interpretation, happens in the magisterium, not in among the people who gather with their bibles near the graves that claimed their loved ones, and will soon claim them. (Sorry. I’ll get off my soap box.)

The theses of the “theologies of liberation” are widely popularized under a simplified form, in formation sessions or in what are called “base groups” which lack the necessary catechetical and theological preparation as well as the capacity for discernment. Thus these theses are accepted by generous men and women without any critical judgment being made. (XI.15)

Given these declarations from the Congregation, it is no surprise that Leonardo Boff gets in trouble for writing a book this one: Ecclesiogenesis, The Base Communities Reinvent the Church. Boff takes seriously the hermeneutic and ecclesiastical authority of the grassroots movements of liberation theology:

The rise of the basic church communities and the praxis of these communities are of matchless value when it comes to questioning the prevailing manner of being church. They are sprung from basic, minimum elements like faith, the reading of the word, and meditation on it, and mutual assistance in all human dimensions. As we have seen, they are genuine church. (23)

Building on such a conception of the Church of the People, a critique of the very structures of the Church is developed. It is not simply the case of fraternal correction of pastors of the Church whose behavior does not reflect the evangelical spirit of service and is linked to old-fashioned signs of authority which scandalize the poor. It has to do with a challenge to the ‘sacramental and hierarchical structure’ of the Church, which was willed by the Lord Himself. There is a denunciation of members of the hierarchy and the magisterium as objective representatives of the ruling class which has to be opposed. Theologically, this position means that ministers take their origin from the people who therefore designate ministers of their own choice in accord with the needs of their historic revolutionary mission. (IX.13)

I think the theologians whose lives resound with the cries of the oppressed ask us a fundamental question: What does it mean to worship the same God while forgetting about our brothers and sisters who live on the underside of history, hidden by the mechanisms progress and development? And this question is also quite threatening, especially if we listen to how some among the poor and oppressed answer it:

The poor of the earth, in their struggles for liberation, in their faith and hope in the Father, are coming to the realization that, to put it in the words of Arguedas, ‘the God of the masters is not the same.’ Their God is not the God of the poor. For ultimately the dominator is one who does not really believe in the God of the Bible.