Curtis A. Bronzan

In this post, I continue looking at the deconstruction of the church by engaging with René Girard, who, being trained as an anthropologist and historian, has written extensively upon the inherent violent nature of cultural systems by thoroughly examining literature as well as engaging the founding myths of civilization(s). He is known for articulating the connection between sacrificial violence and religious systems, developing the theory of mimetic desire, and describing the scapegoat mechanism – three concepts intimately intertwined.

Girard argues that only the Judeo-Christian Scriptures give us the possibility of denying such violent, culturally inherited impulses. In Girard and Theology, Michael Kirwan states, “Jesus’ ferocious attack on Israel’s religious leaders is really an assault on a religious system which preserves its authority and integrity at the expense of sacrificial victims.” (GT, 83)

Thus, Girard is a necessary thinker for seeking to fashion a postmodern ecclesiology in light of Jesus destruction of the temple.

Mimetic theory builds on the insights of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who asserted that subjects desire what others possess, in defiance of the tenth commandment! Girard, however, postulates that our desires are even more rudimentary: specifically that we desire what we see others desiring. He stated in an interview that

the root of all conflict is… ‘competition’, mimetic rivalry between persons, countries, cultures. Competition is the desire to imitate the other in order to obtain the same thing he or she has, by violence if need be… Human relations are essentially relations of imitation, of rivalry. (GT, 22-23)

Could we not extend his statement to include even religious communities seeking to increase their attendance? Whenever difficulty arises in a given society, this mimesis leads to violence. To understand why this is so, we must turn our attention toward another of Girard’s theories, the scapegoat mechanism.

In his book The Scapegoat, Girard sets out by engaging with Guillaume de Machaut, a French poet in the mid-fourteenth century, who authored Judgment of the King of Navarre. In it, Guillaume describes what we now refer to as the Black Plague, which he wrongly believes was caused by Jews who purposely poisoned the town’s drinking water. Using this historical event – and more importantly Machaut’s explication of it – allows Girard to explicate how the Jews were scapegoated:

Ultimately, the persecutors always convince themselves that a small number of people, or even a single individual, despite his relative weakness, is extremely harmful to the whole of society. The stereotypical accusation justifies and facilitates this belief by ostensibly acting the role of mediator. (TS, 15)

An obvious corollary is evident in the Gospel accounts. Notice even in Mark, most likely the earliest account, that asserts,

the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have Pilate release Barabbas instead.
“What shall I do, then, with the one you call the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked them.
“Crucify him!” they shouted.
“Why? What crime has he committed?” asked Pilate.
But they shouted all the louder, “Crucify him!”
Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified. (Mark 15.11-15)

Within this account we can easily recognize both the scapegoat mechanism applied to Jesus, as one who is presented by Pilate as an innocent victim, as well as mimetic desire, with the chief priests ‘stirring up the crowd’ to release Barabbas instead.

His reading of the Gospel accounts, especially through the lens of myth, leads Girard to continually argue for the victimization and innocence of Jesus. While ultimately, of course, this is undeniable, the way in which Girard does so betrays a historical understanding of Jesus’ temple action and its ramifications.

In I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, Girard states, “the Gospels are aware of what they are doing. They not only tell the truth about victims unjustly condemned, but they know they are telling it, and they know that in speaking the truth they are taking again the path of the Hebrew Bible.” (127) By reading the Gospel accounts as primarily literary texts, Girard fails to properly integrate the historical event that undergirds them. Thus, we must further deconstruct Girard’s deconstruction!

Again, without seeking to assert that Jesus’ crucifixion was somehow justified, notice Mark’s explanatory comment following the symbolic temple action and Jesus’ ‘teaching’: “The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.” (Mark 11.18) While the evangelist has revealed that the ‘chief priests and teachers of the law’ have been seeking to kill Jesus since the early chapters of Mark, it is this quotation that leads directly to the crucifixion.

Thus, Kirwan’s interpretation, that “Jesus symbolically completes his mission to Israel through the cleansing of the Temple, but instead of preaching resentful vengeance he moves towards a loving self-offering as an act of atonement for the collective force of human sin”, (GT, 38) is reversed. Indeed, it is the other way around: Jesus’ loving self-offering leads Him to symbolically complete his mission to Israel through the destruction of the Temple. Of course, as the fulfillment of the promised Messiah, Jesus’ judgment upon the temple system was entirely justified.

Contrary to the charge leveled against deconstruction, Girard’s theory vehemently relinquishes any emphasis on lack. Kirwan asserts,

mimetic theory renounces any kind of ‘pact with the negative’ which makes the sinfulness and need of the human beings the controlling factor in the narrative. The reality is the other way around: we only have a sense of the mess because Christ has been raised from the dead. (GT, 68)

It is striking, then, that both he and Girard include few of the historical implications of Jesus’ counter-temple movement, which need not be confined to the symbolic event that induces the temple authorities at the end of the synoptics, but could also be implied throughout Jesus’ continual mission to extend the Kingdom outside Israel’s central institution. To his credit, Girard does find great significance in Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 118:22; “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone”, which is found in each of the synoptic Gospels, Acts, and 1st Peter. Kirwan notes, “‘The stone the builders rejected’ means that the fate of the scapegoated victim has become the great hermeneutical principle, enabling us to decode all such instances of persecution.” (GT, 84)

Though he does not engage specifically with Jesus destruction of the temple, we can recognize the importance of Girard’s thinking for our thesis. Indeed, Girard’s insight to the nature of religious systems and their violent foundations helps us recognize the possible implication of Jesus’ death, were we to fully recognize it in the way Girard reveals. And while we may not go so far as to assert that “no religious culture or institution has done a demonstratively better job of ‘deconstructing’ sacred violence than Christianity”, (GT, 123) we could agree that this ought to be the case. Indeed, Girard’s theory does present “a petite idée of infinite applicability, rather than yet another totalizing system”, (GT, 134) especially in light of our project here.

Jesus’ destructive temple action functions as the fulfillment of His counter-cultural, counter-temple movement which sought to emphatically extend the good news of the Kingdom to the other, in which Girard’s theory does assist. Engaging with Girard’s Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, Kirwan explains: “There is no change in ‘me’ without change in my relation to the other; nor is there any change in ‘me’ unless it is initiated by the other.” (GT, 51) This insight is perhaps most helpful, as it pertains specifically to Jesus’ proclamation, that the temple was to be “a house of prayer for all nations”, (Mark 11.17) necessarily implying engagement with the other – and the Other.

In this post, I argue for the deconstruction of the church by addressing the father of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida. I do so primarily through engaging Derrida and Theology, a recent book by Steven Shakespeare. In the coming days, I will do the same by looking at the work of Gianni Vattimo and René Girard.

At the outset of Derrida and Theology, Steven Shakespeare relates the work of Jacques Derrida to Woody Allen’s 1997 movie Deconstructing Harry. He writes

Allen’s film plays on the caricature of the dissolute writer. [The main character] objects to religious fanaticism, indeed to all religion as arbitrary and exclusive, undermining our universal obligations to all people regardless of creed and race. However, his own life is fragmented, shallow and bitter. He cannot help confusing real life and fiction, with disastrous consequences for the former. He seems incapable of sustaining any lasting relationship. In the end, it is only his fiction that offers him any redemption, any way of gathering the shards of his life together. (DT, 1)

This comparison, though limited, holds keen insights for another comparison at the heart of this essay: the work of Derrida with Jesus’ first-century temple action. Just as Block, the main character in Allen’s film, objects to fanatical expressions of faith, so Jesus’ deconstructive temple action pronounces judgment upon exclusivist religious practices in his day.

Indeed, as we will see, Jesus’ pronouncement immediately following his action, seeks to reorient the first-century Temple toward its original purpose for the ‘other’: to be “a house of prayer for all nations.” (Mark 11.17) While we may not be willing to go as far as to assert that His personal life is not divided, the Gospels do present Jesus as the fulfillment of Israel’s history, whose communal life could be characterized as “fragmented, shallow and bitter.” Further, Jesus cannot help integrating the Hebrew Scriptures with his own life, indeed with “disastrous consequences,” and yet it is this text that guides His mission toward redemptive meaning. A final similarity is found in Jesus’ relationship with the religious authorities, His twelve disciples, and even His own family, each of who have been entirely incapable of sustaining any pronounced commitment to His Kingdom movement. This post, then, will seek to explore the culmination of Jesus’ counter-Temple movement with regard not to Harry Block, but Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction.

There are those, of course, who would question engaging Christian theology or ecclesiology with one who openly declares he could “rightly pass for an atheist.” At the same time, we ought to recognize that this perspective “ignores the difficult and contested history of theology itself, which, even confining ourselves to the Christian tradition, is one of dialogues, appropriations of other languages, debates and disputes.” (DT, 3) Indeed, in faith “we are invited into the space of an open-ended conversation.” (DT, 7)

At the outset, we note the limits of comparing Jesus’ action with Derrida’s concept:

Deconstruction is not so much a technique that an individual can master and employ. It is more an inherent dynamic of language and meaning. It is something that happens, and that reading and writing and acting engages with, without us ever fully grasping it. Reading deconstructively means something like being attentive to an event, an unexpected arrival, that interrupts, contradicts and dislocates what appeared to be settled and fixed. (DT, 25)

Indeed, deconstruction – which builds upon Heidegger’s destruktion – is not something to be employed in order to bring about a desired result. At the outset, then, it seems there is an inherent problem in our comparison, namely that we are arguing for Jesus’ action as the employment of this technique. On the contrary, our thesis here is much simpler: that Jesus’ temple action functions as the culmination of His mission, which, as a result of our reading here, can be characterized as opening a space for the Event. This must taken place, then, “in the middle of secondariness, interpretation and flux.” (DT, 27) In this sense, then, we are seeking to view Jesus’ mission as a reading of first-century Jewish faith, which ‘interrupts, contradicts and dislocates’ the seemingly ‘settled and fixed’ system of power. Notice, for instance, Matthew 11.16-17:

To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others:
We played the flute for you,
and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge
and you did not mourn.

Indeed, here we see Jesus deconstructively “reading” the faith of those within His own first-century context. As Steven Shakespeare notes, “Human religion produces only idols. Only the free self-revelation of a wholly other God can create in us the capacity to receive God’s word.” (DT, 210)

As aforementioned, the mission of Jesus took place secondarily, within the history of interpretation. While a Christian understanding regarding the role of the temple is often projected onto the gospels, we must seek to pull back these layers to reveal a Jewish understanding. As Derrida asserts in Glas, “The risk, then, is the Jewish reading.” (DT, 124) Jesus’ particular reading regarding the role of the temple could have been influenced by Solomon’s prayer of dedication in 1st Kings 8.41-43, which includes an emphasis similar to what some proponents of “missional” thinking would assert today:

As for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name – for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm – when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name.

Structurally, then, the temple was meant to be “associated with the reality of the object”, (DT, 35) in this case, YHWH – for ‘all the peoples of the earth.’ And yet, as Derrida would assert, “[s]ense can be lost along the way. Meaning can wander from its source.” (DT, 32) Jesus’ temple action, viewed from this perspective, seeks to reorient Israel’s central institution back to its original purpose. Thus, it functions as both the continuation and fulfillment of His counter-temple movement that has previously included subversive teaching, table fellowship, healing, forgiveness, and symbolic actions (such as baptism and the Passover meal) all of which were tied unambiguously to the Temple cult.

Jesus’ temple action, then, reveals that the institution is a function of what Derrida would call différance, a term crafted by Derrida himself. This neologism plays on the French word différer, which can mean both “to defer” and “to differ.” Thus, Jesus is seeking to remind the Jews that the temple was originally built in order that all people would know YHWH, who is both different from the institution and to whom the institution is meant to defer. As Derrida himself asserts in Writing and Difference, “[l]ife negates itself in literature only so that it may survive better. So that it may be better. It does not negate itself any more than it affirms itself: it differs from itself, defers itself and writes itself as difference.” (DT, 98)

Commenting on this, Shakespeare notes, “In this sense, life and God are close to one another.” In the same way, Jesus’ temple action negates the institution in order to save it. Note also: “The trace is always crossing itself out, always deferred, never at one, never home. The trace is therefore not only a condition of meaning of unmeaning too.” (DT, 41)

With many allusions to what seems like a negative Christian theology, Derrida seeks to distance himself by utilizing the term khôra, found in Plato, and more recently Heidegger, which is defined not as “a receptacle, not a giver or gift… [though] in its passivity… allows the world to take place.” (DT, 154) If we can briefly set aside the idea of a receptacle as a physical area, we must ask, is not such an ‘interval’ or ‘space’ congruent with Jesus’ declaration regarding the purpose of the temple? Indeed, by overturning tables and benches, as well as keeping anyone from using the temple court as a shortcut through town, Jesus seeks to provide a passive openness to the other. It can become, then, “not a barren desert (a very patriarchal image of lonely aridity) but a fecund matrix, a womb of possibilities and new life.” (DT, 202)

Notice a similar theme in Derrida’s assertion in Writing and Difference, that

God separated himself from himself in order to let us speak, in order to astonish and interrogate us. He did so not by speaking but by keeping still, by letting silence interrupt his voice and his signs, by letting the Tables be broken… God no longer speaks to us, he has interrupted himself: we must take words upon ourselves.” (DT, 67; 68)

If our thesis, so far, is correct, we can find a corollary between Jesus’ temple action and the demise of Western metaphysics. Shakespeare notes that Derrida’s project uncovered how

the very openness and incompleteness that we find in the most purified structures of truth shows that such distinctions are unstable at best. At worst, they lead us back into dogmatism. We might even suggest that they result in a form of idolatry: taking as timeless and absolute what is secondary and contingent. (DT, 49)

In the same way, the structure of the first-century Temple cult reveals an incomplete system of truth, namely because of its exclusion of the other. Its dogmatism can be as clearly perceived as its idolatry. We need no further evidence than to note that, historically speaking, Jesus temple action leads directly to his execution. Note especially Mark 11.18, which immediately follows Jesus’ action and proclamation: “The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.”

We have been seeking to elucidate how the first-century temple functioned similarly to how Socrates viewed writing; as a pharmakon, “a Greek word that means both cure and poison.” (DT, 57) As such, we are now at a place to recognize the primary reason Derrida’s project is so central to Jesus’ symbolic action. This is due to its functioning as a heterology, a project focused on radical otherness, as Rodolphe Gasché has asserted. Indeed,

Derrida does not claim that deconstruction must be purely secular, this-worldly, renouncing all ideas of transcendence. We should not forget that it is in the name of the other, in response to the other, that deconstruction seeks to expose the limits of any system. (DT, 75)

In the same way, as aforementioned, Jesus’ entire countercultural, counter-Temple mission and temple action is centered on the ‘other.’ Note, again, Jesus’ proclamation:

Is it not written:
‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’ (Mark 11.17)

For the temple cult to remain faithful to its “missional” calling, it was to be a place where all people could come to pray. And yet, it had betrayed its purpose. Just as Derrida asserted that “[w]riting exposes us to the other, not just the other person but to the wholly other that subverts our mastery and divides our human essence”, (DT, 83) so the function of the temple was meant to be a place that exposed God’s holy people to other people and to Himself, the tout autre.

It has been written that “[f]or Derrida, philosophy is always obsessed with its ‘other’” (DT, 57), and yet, this is much more than ethereal philosophical speculation. Indeed, “Derrida’s thought invites the coming of the other, the address of the other, and this is an irreducibly religious motif.” (DT, 197) Jesus’ symbolic action, then, seeks to reopen the structural understanding of the first-temple so that it can be available to the other: “In other words, signs can only be available to others if they are not tied to a present meaning immediately contained within my own mind.” (DT, 79)

The temple had, of course, become irreplaceably tied to a function of what Emile Durkheim would call mechanical solidarity, namely that there are insiders and outsiders, with obvious distinctions between them. Missiologically speaking, the temple had become a bounded set, when it was meant to be centered. By engaging with Foucault’s History of Madness, we see the injustice of the temple was, in some sense, necessary:

This inhuman madness is necessary for thought to get going. If it is not acknowledged, even by those wishing to stand up for the victims of history’s exclusions, then we risk erecting a totalitarian structure, with all the potential for violence that entails (and we should not this early ethical concern of Derrida’s). (DT, 84)

Here one thinks of Žižek’s dictum that those who rob banks are often those who set up others – and it could be argued that throughout history Christian ecclesial institutions have done just that. Steven Shakespeare notes that at the American Academy of Religion conference, John Caputo once asked Jacques Derrida “To whom did Derrida pray and what answer did he expect?” (DT, 11) In his reply, Derrida noted that “his skepticism is part of the prayer, part of an openness to the approach of the other that no secular or religious system [could] stifle.” (DT, 13)

In conclusion, we again ask, can we not find in this response a similarity to the prayer that Jesus believes should be characteristic in the khôra of the temple? Is this not why he seeks to deconstruct the entire temple cult? Shakepeare concludes with a statement about Derrida, that could be easily applied to Jesus’ symbolic temple action: “It is as if he is saying, or showing us, that one way in which to disrupt systems of thought that have totalitarian pretensions is to pray.” (DT, 15)

As we have seen, Derrida’s thought lends itself quite well to aspects of Christian theology and ecclesiology. His emphasis on deconstruction helps us imagine – in a postmodern setting – what ministry in Jesus’ name among systems of power could look like. His emphasis on différance reminds us that, to employ Nietzsche’s assertion, our institutions are not facts, but are merely interpretations. And his khôra helps us recognize what such institutions could be. It has been noted, “[p]erhaps we can find in Derrida, if not a new theology, at least a thinker who provokes us to consider the possibility of doing theology otherwise.” (DT, 47) Could we not, in the same way, find in Derrida, if not a new ecclesiology, at least a thinker who provokes us to consider the possibility of doing ecclesiology otherwise?

Throughout recent decades of declining church attendance, a curious dynamic has been uncovered, most emphatically pronounced by the title of a 2007 book: They Like Jesus But Not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations. In it, pastor Dan Kimball asserts that those outside of the institution of faith see the church as

an organized religion with a political agenda, judgmental and negative, dominated by males and oppress[ing] to females, homophobic, arrogantly claim[ing] that all other religions are wrong, and full of fundamentalists who take the whole Bible literally. (Kimball, They Like Jesus But Not the Church, 9)

Interestingly, throughout its pages, Kimball never asks the central question necessary for ecclesiological insight: what is the church? If he did so, he might uncover an interesting dynamic, namely that the church is not – and was never intended to be – preeminently an institution, but instead was, is, and will forever be, a people.

After recognizing that dynamic, however, Kimball might then realize that those who hate the church are also those who are a part of it; who are seeking to renew it by their very presence in it.

In his book What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, philosopher John Caputo, brings these two streams together. After emphatically pronouncing that the church is “Plan B” (to the Kingdom of God, of course), he asserts:

if we ask, “What would Jesus deconstruct?” the answer is first and foremost the church! For the idea behind the church is to give way to the kingdom, to proclaim and enact and finally disappear into the kingdom that Jesus called for, all the while resisting the temptation of confusing itself with the kingdom. (Caputo, What Would Jesus Deconstruct?, 35)

Alongside the demise of metaphysics, then, does not our current postmodern culture allow us – even demand of us? – that we question the role of institutions in and for our lives? Is this not what Jesus proclaimed, that tearing down the temple would result in it being raised in three days (John 2.13) and proclaimed “‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Mark 11.17)

Instead of, like Kimball, fearing the distrust of emerging generations, we are in a perfect place in history to remember God’s initial plan for institutions of faith, as Solomon prayed so long ago:

[a]s for the foreigner who does not belong to your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name – for men will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm – when he comes and prays toward this temple, then hear from heaven, your dwelling place, and do whatever the foreigner asks of you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your own people Israel, and may know that this house I have built bears your Name. (1st Kings 8.41-43)

Here we see both the centripetal and centrifugal aspects of mission. Indeed, this brings us back to our original section on postmodernism and deconstruction. James K.A. Smith, again, clarifies:

God does not call for the deconstruction and dismantling of the deconstructible on the basis of or with a view to some undeconstructible and impossible kingdom; rather, God condescends to inhabit the deconstructible.” (Smith, What Jesus Did: The Incarnation as the More Radical Hermeneutics)

In other words, the mission of those who like Jesus – or, better yet, seek to follow Him – in postmodern cultures is not to tear down the existing institution, but to echo Derrida’s veins! to the coming of God’s Kingdom into a new time and place, by the power of His Spirit, transforming within their sphere of influence.

As we have seen, postmodern philosophy and culture do not necessarily preclude Christian faith. On the contrary, they can lead to a renewed appreciation for the incarnation of God’s Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who willingly took on human flesh to “swim in cultural water” like each of us. When recognized in light of God’s saving work throughout history, postmodernity can indeed lead to a robust faith that seeks to grow through Scripture and in community, that it might go out into the world to proclaim God’s narrative: the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

[Photo credit: Dave Walker]

For the church newsletter:

On March 21^st, at 11:12pm – a mere five hours after the conclusion of my ordination service – I updated my Facebook status. It read, “Curtis A. Bronzan is not now, nor will he ever be, a reverend. ‘Curtis’ is just fine.” Amidst the myriad responses was a friend from my seminary days who wrote, “hmm…not just a river in Egypt?”

In one sense, I suppose, he’s right. I now am a Reverend. Which is fantastic. Serving the Church of Jesus Christ is all I’ve ever dreamt of doing with my life. But, in another sense – as many of you know – I bristle at the thought of being “Pastor.” Notice Jesus’ strong words for the religious leaders of His day:

The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.

Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’

Don’t let people do that to you, put you on a pedestal like that. You all have a single Teacher, and you are all classmates. Don’t set people up as experts over your life, letting them tell you what to do. Save that authority for God; let him tell you what to do. No one else should carry the title of ‘Father’; you have only one Father, and he’s in heaven. And don’t let people maneuver you into taking charge of them. There is only one Life-Leader for you and them – Christ. (Matthew 23.2-10, The Message)

In “Jesus’ day” – as we might say in Sunday School – the religious folks put themselves up on pedestals because of their knowledge, prestige, and power – and they didn’t live how they taught others to live. I fear that things haven’t changed all that much in 2000 years. And as I recognize the sinfulness of my own heart, I fear that being called Reverend might just go to my head and keep me from trying to, as Paul says, “work out my salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2.12) Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful to have received a profoundly transformative education and am honored to serve at Good Shepherd, amongst some of the most wonderful people God ever created. But I never want my office to become who I am. Instead, I want to follow the one true “Life-Leader” for you and me – Christ.

That brings me to a second reason I’m uncomfortable with my new title: in short, where’s yours!? The Christian Scriptures repeatedly affirm that the Church of Jesus is a Body where everyone has a part, and I fear that seeing pastors “up there on a pedestal” negatively influences the inherent worth of the other parts of the Body. One of the foundational doctrines of our faith is the priesthood of all believers, which reminds us that each and every one of us is a priest in Jesus’ Church. In sports terminology, everyone gets to play! Or, better yet, in the Apostle Paul’s words,

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be?” (1^st Corinthians 12.14-19)

In short, if I’m “Reverend Curtis,” then among us are also “Teacher Joanne” and “Pray-er Michelle” and “Administrator Jack.” Yes, administration is a spiritual gift! (see 1^st Corinthians 12.27-31)

Another Facebook response that night asserted that my wife’s grandmother would be proud. It went on to explain “She thinks it’s ‘irreverent’ to call any person, but Christ, Reverend.” In short, I’m with her. But, I suppose you can call me anything you like – as long as it’s not late for dinner. But know this: if you call me “Reverend” or “Pastor,” be prepared for me to grimace – and then call you by your spiritual gift as well.

Some great thoughts (if repeated from other talks) engaging Jesus, Chesterton, Kierkegaard, the Apostle Paul, Bonhoeffer, and Žižek (if unmentioned), from Peter Rollins at Revolution NYC.

Today was supposed to be a pretty full day, with two fairly important meetings at Fuller (important for me, anyway). Instead, I’m at home trying to fight an impending migraine.

With reading difficult, I put in one of the best documentaries ever in the history of the world, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.” Here’s a quote from Jeff Tweedy I need to remember for my impending ThM thesis:

It’s a constant process, we make records and they’re like, that ends up being a thing that you’re making and you have a million options as to what that thing can be and what shape it can be… We generally go for a pretty straight definitive version of what the song sounds like it should be and then deconstruct it a little bit and see if there’s some more exciting way to approach it… There’s no reason – at all – not to destroy it. We made it, so it’s ours to destroy. That’s liberating and exiting in a really creative way.

It’s wild how many things in this DVD seem applicable to my work, but then again, I may be just reading into it my own love of Wilco. But seriously, couldn’t this same sentiment be applied to the church? Like John Caputo says (previously noted here):

The church is Plan B. (In deconstruction, everything is Plan B.)… The existence of the church is provisional – like a long-term substitute teacher – praying for the kingdom, whose coming Jesus announce and which everyone was expecting would come sometime soon. But this coming was deferred, and the church occupies the space of “deferral,” of the distance of “difference,” between two comings. (I just said, in case you missed it, the church is a function of différance!) In the meantime, and it is always the meantime for the church, the church is supposed to do the best it can to bring that kingdom about in itself, here on earth, in a process of incessant self-renewal or aut0-deconstruction, while not setting itself up as a bunch of kings or princes. The church is by definition a call (kletos) for renewal.

That is why the church is “deconstructible,” but the kingdom of God, if there is such a thing, is not. The church is a provisional construction, and whatever is constructed is deconstructible, while the kingdom of God is that in virtue of which the church is deconstructible. so, if we ask, “What would Jesus deconstruct?” the answer is first and foremost the church! For the idea behind the church is to give way to the kingdom, to proclaim and enact and finally disappear into the kingdom that Jesus called for, all the while resisting the temptation of confusing itself with the kingdom. (WWJD?, 35)

A while back when Glenn Beck first said this I wasn’t foolish enough to engage with it. But, take me out of my comfort zone for a few days and I get myself into all kinds of trouble. I’m sure by now we’ve all heard this by now:

I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words.

Some people have erroneously stated that this is unbiblical, though I’m afraid they’re quite wrong. Jesus, in the Gospel of Matthew, quite clearly states:

When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you owned a business I was able to buy something from, I was thirsty and you sold me a bottle of water, I was a stranger and you rented me a hotel room, I needed clothes and you designed some really cool ones, I was sick and your ambulance company took me to a hospital, I was in prison and you told me what a terrible sinner I was.’

See? Jesus isn’t really into the whole social justice thing.

Of course, I’m joking a little bit. Or, a lot bit.

If you’re a Glenn Beck fan, please continue reading, because he’s not the only one who sees things a little differently.

The second half of the aforementioned passage is actually a little bit different:

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

Granted, I’m not really all that familiar with Beck, so I’m not sure where he is at theologically. Either way, it doesn’t seem like his theology guides this perspective. Instead, I think it might be his political outlook.

At the religious gathering I serve, I’ve shared the findings of professor Scot McKnight of North Park University. Each year he invites his first year students to fill out a survey regarding their perception of Jesus’ understanding of ethical issues. The next week he hands out the same survey asking his students their perspective.

Of course, they’re almost exactly the same. Maybe Glenn is guilty of the same sort of thing. I know I am.

But it begs the question: Do we come to the Scriptures with our ideas and try to fit them to our mold? Or do we allow the Scriptures to shape our perspectives?

Glenn and I are similar in one regard: We both long for a world that doesn’t need the government to take care of it. And far as I understand, he sees the business world as the remedy. And I see the church – if only it remembered passages like the one quoted above. And again, I’m implicating myself as well.

It’s easy to read books, write blogs, and preach sermons. Doing something, on the other hand?

I previously posted some brief thoughts on Monster of Folk’s self-titled debut record, specifically the first track “Dear God.” The last track offers some concluding thoughts:

Mohammed rolling dice with Christ at twilight,
and they hear their Master’s voice.
They run to do their chores at Master’s calling.
Their job tonite, re-write the bible,
for a whole new generation of non-believers.

Singer Jim James, formerly of My Morning Jacket, helps us understand the theological perspective behind “His Master’s Voice” (albeit while discussing “Dear God”):

I consider myself really spiritual. I feel the presence of God, or whatever that is, all of the time, whether it’s life or music. I’ve never been able to define it or call it Christianity or Islam. I can’t put a label on it.

He concludes the track with

You’re only gonna hear what you want to hear,
do you hear your Master’s voice now?
Mohammed and Christ speak twice as nice,
but the one that I like best, he sings inside my chest.
I hear my Master’s voice now, calling out, calling out, calling out, calling out.

David Toole’s Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo: Theological Reflections on Nihilism, Tragedy, and Apocalypse, engages some similar territory, as does the documentary on quantum physics What the Bleep Do We Know?, which tells the story of native Americans upon the arrival of Columbus.

As the story goes, native Americans living near the Atlantic ocean could not see the ships in the ocean, because they had never seen one before. The holy man of the village was the first to notice ripples in the water, and stared for days before he was able to comprehend the reality of the ships who had docked a hundred yards out.

Could this be a metaphor that helps us understand Jesus’ constant question whether we have “eyes to see” or “ears to hear”?

Throughout these posts we have sought to understand what his symbolic Temple action had to do with the previous mission of Jesus, an itinerant, first century Jewish rabbi. Noting at the outset that his prophetic judgment of the first century Temple led to his untimely death, we have engaged three main elements to Jesus’ counter-Temple movement: his teaching, community building, and symbolic actions.

In addressing the subversive, revolutionary practices of this figure from Nazareth, we have seen that his continual mission was to offer covenant renewal to God’s chosen people – and to purposely do so outside of the institutions of first-century faith. As such, we can wholeheartedly agree that “[w]hat he did in Jerusalem was completely consistent with what he had done and said throughout his public work.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 424)

Indeed, throughout his public work, Jesus continually subverted the religious and political establishment so much so, that the religious and political leaders sought to kill him on numerous occasions. But now, “with hindsight from the Temple-action, the significance of Jesus’ symbolic actions in the earlier period of his work becomes all the clearer.” (Jesus and the Victory of God, 433) We can wholeheartedly see that every aspect of Jesus’ ongoing mission was to deconstruct the Temple, returning God’s people into a lasting covenant with their Creator.

In light of Jesus’ prophetic Temple action, which clarifies the earlier period of his work, we conclude with David Toole’s engagement with MacIntrye:

Hence, although staging Godot in Sarajevo may be like fiddling while Roman burns, it is nonetheless an eminently practical thing to do. And even if the wall does not come crashing down and even if the war goes on and on, these acts themselves embody a transformation of power that renders lives dignified, even if the world around them is not. The world, and not the wall, may come crumbling down, having failed to justify itself as an aesthetic phenomenon; nonetheless, the lives of the individuals in the theatre attained an aesthetic justification that the world itself did not. (Waiting for Godot in Sarajevo, 195)

While not wanting to make light of the restoring and reconciling mission of Jesus of Nazareth, an interesting parallel can be found with the aforementioned quote. The mission of the Church that seeks follow in the footsteps of this itinerant rabbi may seem from the outside like staging Godot in Sarajevo or fiddling while Rome burns, though it, too, is an eminently practical thing to do.

For though the world may not be immediately put to rights, and the Church may not justify itself as a faithful institution, its action too “embodies a transformation of power that renders lives dignified.” May the individuals of its Body attain God’s communal justification by seeking to re-embody the message of its Founder, giving their lives as he gave his.