Eye-Deep In Lies
by Blindman At The Gate

Why is it that if we dare to envision a world without war
(A hope offered humanity by the prophet Isaiah bar Amoz)
We’re considered hopelessly naïve or even treasonous?

Why is it that everyone knows Jesus taught the way of nonviolence
(Just read the Sermon on the Mount and you’ll see what I mean)
Except those who most vociferously call themselves Christians?

Why is it that a clear renunciation of war is called cowardly
(Suggest killing enemies is not the way and see what happens)
When following the crowd has never required any courage?

Why is it we’re suspicious of those called peacemakers
(Ask brave Daniel Ellsberg, he’ll tell you all about it)
When the One we worship is called the Prince of Peace?

Why is it we believe the coming of Christ will bring the reign of peace
(For we do confess that someday the lion will lay down with the lamb)
But in the mean time act as if we must preserve war as long as possible?

Why are those who renounce war and embrace peace called stupid
(“The poor dolts don’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain”)
When Einstein said, “I’m not only a pacifist, but a militant pacifist”?

Why am I even bothering to talk about the topic of peace
(“Shouldn’t he be preaching the gospel or something?”)
When I know good and well it will only cause me grief?

A fellow who goes by the weird name Blindman at the Gate composed this brief meditation after learning that the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs reports that 18 combat veterans commit suicide every day.

(The painting is Isaiah by Marc Chagall)

A Long Way from Mona Lisa’s Smile
by Brian Zahnd

Yesterday Edvard Munch’s modern masterpiece, The Scream, sold at Sotheby’s auction house in New York for a record $120 million, making it the most expensive piece of art ever sold at auction. To which I say three things:

1. I like Edvard Munch. I saw an exhibit of his paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009.

2. $120 million is a lot of money for a painting.

3. We’re a long way from Mona Lisa’s smile.

What do I mean by that? Well, if Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa with her enigmatic smile is the iconic image of the Renaissance, then Munch’s Scream may be the leading contender for the iconic image of modern man. And this is worth pondering. How has a mysterious smile been replaced by a horrified scream? What has happened to us? What is it about Munch’s disturbing masterpiece that speaks to us so deeply?

Edvard Munch painted The Scream in 1893. In describing his inspiration for the painting, the Norwegian artist wrote in his diary,

“I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun was setting. I felt a breath of melancholy – Suddenly the sky turned blood-red. I stopped, and leaned against the railing, deathly tired – Looking out across the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and town. My friends walked on – I stood there, trembling with fear. And I sensed a great, infinite scream pass through nature.

Standing alone on a bridge under a blood red sky trembling with fear, Munch sensed an “infinite scream pass through nature.” What was it? What was this overwhelming anxiety that Edvard Munch felt and depicted to the world in his painting? Was it, perhaps, the shared anxiety of modern man disoriented as the traditions that had interpreted the Western world for centuries were now being jettisoned?

Friedrick Nietzsche, whom Edvard Munch studied (and depicted in a 1906 painting) spoke of a post-Christian Europe as a world with no horizon. Christianity had provided the horizon of absolute truth for Western Civilization for well over a thousand years, but with what Nietzsche called “the death of God” (by which he meant a culture that had become post-Christian), that horizon had been erased. With the loss of an absolute horizon modern man feels the terror of spiritual vertigo. And he screams.

Put more simply: A world without God is a terrifying place.

I think that may be why The Scream speaks to modern man so deeply. It captures the anxiety of living alone in a world abandoned by God with a sense of impending dread hanging overhead. We’re a long way from the God-saturated sacramental world where Mona Lisa could have her quiet smile. Now we stand alone on a bridge to nowhere feeling an infinite scream of anxiety pass through our modern soul.

Sold! To the anxious man for a hundred and twenty million dollars!

We’re modern people.
We’ve left God behind.
We’re on our own.
We’re all alone.
On a bridge to nowhere
With no line on the horizon.
Adrift among the dead.
Lost in existential dread.
So we scream.
If only in our sleep.

Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling. (Mark 5:5)

Is there any hope for our disoriented screamer? Yes!

Jesus hears our screams. And draws near.

One of the things I love about Jesus is how undaunted he was by hopeless situations. Nowhere is this more beautifully depicted than in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. What do we find there? Three hopeless situations…

• A demon-tormented man screaming among the dead. (We all have our demons.)
• A woman with an issue of blood who couldn’t get well. (We all have our issues.)
• A couple grieving the loss of their daughter. (We all suffer the pain of loss.)

And what happens?
Jesus comes!
Across the sea.
Down the street.
Into the house.

Jesus speaks…
“Come out of the man!”
“Your faith has made you whole!”
“Talitha cumi!”

The demons are gone.
The issue is healed.
The dead live again.

What am I trying to say?
I’m saying Jesus hears our scream.
And he comes to us.

(Even to our God-denying modern man standing alone on a bridge to nowhere screaming his little bald head off.)

If we will fall at Jesus’ feet…
If we will reach out to touch him…
If we will fear not and only believe…
Jesus will address himself to our demons, our issues, our deep loss.
We can be set free, made whole, and recalled to life.

Jesus can save us from our scream and give us back our Mona Lisa smile.

Believe.

Amen

BZ

PS

Suggested playlist:

Modern Man by Arcade Fire
No Line On The Horizon by U2
Vertigo by U2
Under The Red Sky by Bob Dylan
Called Out In the Dark by Snow Patrol

(Sorry, no screamo music.)

The Beatitudes
(BZV)

Blessed are those who are poor at being spiritual,
For the kingdom of heaven is well-suited for ordinary people.

Blessed are the depressed who mourn and grieve,
For they create space to encounter comfort from another.

Blessed are the gentle and trusting, who are not grasping and clutching,
For God will personally guarantee their share when heaven comes to earth.

Blessed are those who ache for the world to be made right,
For them the government of God is a dream come true.

Blessed are those who give mercy,
For they will get it back when they need it most.

Blessed are those who have a clean window in their soul,
For they will perceive God when and where others don’t.

Blessed are the bridge-builders in a war-torn world,
For they are God’s children working in the family business.

Blessed are those who are mocked and misunderstood for the right reasons,
For the kingdom of heaven comes to earth amidst such persecution.

BZ

(The artwork is The Sermon on the Mount by Gerald Shepherd.)

Stars
by Brian Zahnd

I don’t spend enough time looking at stars
I’m a modern man, I live with a roof over my head
I live in a world of ambient light with washed out night skies
One reason why there’s not enough wonder in our eyes

Tonight I saw the stars from the crisp Colorado skies
And I said—
The world is old
The stars are older still
They twinkle, but they don’t blink
They’re impassive (I think)

And I wonder—
Do they watch the goings-on on the blue marble below?
Do the twinkling but not blinking stars think…
Will those curious little creatures ever get it together?
Will they ever figure out they’re all in it together?
Will it ever dawn on them they’re children of God?
Will they ever learn that in the long run—
“There’s no them, there’s only us.”

I wonder if they wonder about us
After all, like the song says—
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden
Yes, we do—we’ve got to!
(The bombs are now far too big for us not to!)

I looked at the stars tonight
And I prayed a prayer—
God, I don’t know what will happen tomorrow
I don’t know what will be a billion centuries on
But I believe in you
I believe you’re good, true, and beautiful
I believe you sustain your finite creation from your infinite being
Forgive us. Restore us. Heal us. Help us. Save us. Please!
Oh, yes! I believe you will!
Glory be to Christ!

And so anon or much, much later on…
Everything will be alright—
In the end we’ll find the lost garden
And learn to love our brother
We’ll walk with you again
Or for the first time
And shine like the stars
Forever

BZ

(The painting is, of course, Van Gogh’s Starry Night.)

Resurrection Here and Now

An Easter Monday Meditation

On that first Easter morning God’s new world began. The old world is still with us, still dying, but the new world is here too; the age to come has already begun!

Or as G.K. Chesterton put it…

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of a gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

But what of it? Or as Francis Schaeffer might put the question, how should we then live?

If we are Christians, we should live out of our baptismal identity — we should live as a people who have already died to the old age and already joined Christ in the age to come.

This is what it means to be a baptized person — it means we have been hurled into the future.

Baptism is a portal to the age to come.

In the land of death the baptized are to embody resurrection.

So what does it mean to live here and now as sons and daughters of the resurrection?

It means we leave the age of darkness and death behind. We demonstrate the coming age of new creation here and now.

Christian holiness is not based on a moralistic legal code, but on the fact that we are from the age to come.

That which belongs to the old age of sin and death, the sons and daughters of resurrection are to be done with here and now.

We are to embody Life. LIFE. LIFE!

We are to be…

Pro Life.
Pro Resurrection.
Pro New Creation.

As a people baptized into resurrection and embodying the age to come we  leave behind…

The convenience-based killing called abortion.
The revenge-based killing called death penalty.
The state-sponsored organized killing called war.
The exploitation of women called pornography.
The exploitation of the poor called cheap labor.
The exploitation of the environment called profitability.

And so on.

To manifest resurrection here and now is to be pro life.

Consistently…not selectively.

Who would Jesus abort?
Who would Jesus execute?
Who would Jesus kill?
Who would Jesus degrade?
Who would Jesus exploit?
Who would Jesus poison?

We know the answer (theoretically).
The body of Christ is to live the answer (corporally).
We are to be the flesh and blood embodiment of resurrection realities.

This (in part) is what it means to be a baptized, Eucharistic, sacramental people pointing the way to God’s redemptive future.

So as Wendell Berry says, practice resurrection!

Christ is Risen!

BZ

PS

Here’s Wendell Berry’s wonderful poem that concludes with the words “practice resurrection.”

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

(The artwork is Van Gogh’s Irises.)

To Mend the World
by Brian Zahnd

November 9, 1938 resides in the catalog of human crimes as Kristallnacht—The Night of Broken Glass. On that dreadful night when Nazi storm troopers smashed, ransacked, burned, and destroyed Jewish homes, synagogues, and businesses throughout Germany, Emil Fackenheim was among the thirty thousand Jewish men arrested and taken to concentration camps. Through an improbable twist of fate the twenty-two year old Fackenheim managed to escape the Sachenhausen concentration camp and was eventually able to get out of Nazi Germany. Following the war he made his way to Canada where he became a prominent Jewish philosopher and Reform rabbi. In 1982 Fackenheim wrote To Mend the World, an influential book on post Holocaust Jewish thought. The title comes from the Jewish theological concept of tikkun olam—“repairing the world.” Tikkun olam is the idea that though the world is broken, it is not beyond repair—that it’s God’s intention to work through humanity in order to repair his creation.

In To Mend the World Emil Fackenheim famously dares to issue to the Jewish community a “614th Commandment.” It’s a daring proposition. As far back as the medieval scholar Maimonides, Jewish rabbis have spoke of the Torah containing 613 commandments. But precisely because of the enormity of the Holocaust experience Fackenheim tells his fellow Jews they must now add one more law to their ancient Torah—a 614th commandment. Commandment 614 is simply this: Thou shalt not give Hitler any posthumous victories. Elaborating on the 614th Commandment Fackenheim says,

“We are forbidden to despair of the world as the place which is to become the kingdom of God, lest we help make it a meaningless place in which God is dead or irrelevant and everything is permitted.”

Fackenheim is saying to his own Jewish community that even in the face of the Holocaust, they are not permitted to give up on the world; despite all the atrocities they must continue to believe that a horribly broken world can be repaired. Fackenheim rightly insists that this world is to be the kingdom of God and to despair of this is to collude with wickedness and give vanquished pathogens of evil posthumous victories.

Of course tikkun olam is properly a Jewish concept, but it is a Jewish concept that Christians can and should embrace. A Christian understanding of tikkun olam is that God is restoring all things through Jesus Christ. (Acts 3:21, Romans 8:19–21, 1 Corinthians 15:24, Ephesians 1:20–23, Colossians 1:19–20) And while it may be true that the Jewish community in general has not recognized that God is repairing the world through Jesus, Christians often fail to recognize that God is repairing the world at all! The Jewish failure to embrace Jesus as the restorer of the world is explainable, at least in part, to the long sad history of Christian anti-Semitism, pogroms and persecutions. But the Christian failure to embrace Jesus as the restorer of the world lacks any justification. Nevertheless, whole segments of the church seem to have no idea that God actually intends to save the world. Somewhere along the way we picked up the inexcusable idea that God has given up on the world. This is especially true in certain forms of world-denying fundamentalism.

Far too many American Christians in particular embrace a faulty, half-baked, doom-oriented, hyper-violent eschatology, popularized in Christian fiction (of all things!) that envisions God as saving parts of people for a non-spatial, non-temporal existence in a Platonic “heaven,” while kicking his own good creation into the garbage can! Framed by this kind of world-despairing eschatology, evangelism comes to resemble something like trying to push people onto the last chopper out of Saigon. But this is an evangelism that bears no resemblance to the apostolic gospel proclaimed in the book of Acts. Christianity’s first apostles evangelized, not by trying to sign people up for an apocalyptic evacuation, but by announcing the arrival of a new world order. The apostles understood the kingdom of God as a new arrangement of human society where Jesus is the world’s true king. Put simply, because Jesus is Lord the world is to be redeemed and not left in ruin.

The appropriate response to this gospel proclamation is to rethink everything in the light of the risen and ascended Christ and live accordingly. We rethink our lives (which is what it means to repent), not so we can escape a doomed planet, but in order to participate in God’s design to redeem the human person and renovate human society in Christ. Salvation is a restoration project, not an evacuation project! Or as Thomas Merton put it, “Eschatology is not an invitation to escape into a private heaven: it is a call to transfigure the evil and stricken world.”

Amen.

BZ

The painting is Christ and the Apostles by Georges Rouault (1871-1958)

LEAP!

And shall I go on being casual and numb?
Pretending
Pretending that I know something about this being I so glibly call God
Or shall I dare to encounter Him?
Him
The One with whom I have to do
The One who can never be an object
Forever and always the eternal subject
Is it grammar or a much deeper truth?
The object is acted upon but the subject acts
God is not in my story—I am in His
How is it I can be unaware of this?
Did I think I invented this story called being?
Surely I’m not that crazy
I belong to His story
History
But there is my story
Mystery
God is no object—only and ever a subject
The Subject
You cannot trivialize The Subject to ology or ism
You can only be aware or oblivious
Of the One who alone possesses innate beingness
The most obvious of all truth
But all truth inheres in subjectivity
Oh!
Subjectivity
Where passion is permitted
Where we are in the story
Where we care
Instead of aloof and comfortably numb
Subjectivity is passion
Faith is passion
Life is passion
Sanity is passion
Objectivity is numb
Empiricism is numb
Death is numb
Madness is numb
Passion saves
My soul
From numbness
Prose
Prozac
Prosaic
Ordinary
Medicated
Unimaginative
Passionless being
Passion saves
Poetic prophetic extraordinary imaginative
Passionate being
Passion saves
To believe is to be passionate
Passion is found in the instant of the leap
When you leap beyond the fence
(Objectivity)
Into the Lion’s presence
(Subjectivity)
Will He kill you or let you live?
Either way you are alive in that moment
You are not cool or “cool”
One is dispassionate the other is self-conscious
In that moment you are neither
You are passionate and engaged
LEAP!
Leap the security barrier of objectivity
Into the presence of the Being Himself
It’s the only hope you have of saving your life
Leprosy is not what you think it is
It doesn’t eat you
It’s only numbness
But numbness will destroy you
LEAP!
Before it’s too late
Before the leprosy takes your legs away
Before the creeping numbness takes your soul away
LEAP!
The Leap of faith
That jumps the objective
To encounter the Subject
Where passion lives
Because now there is nothing between you and the Lion
And you know you live because you feel your heart beat
And you know you live because He lets you live
No more numbness
Passion saves
LEAP!

Blind Man at the Gate

Satan and Empire

When asked to identify the origin of Satan we are commonly directed to Isaiah 14. This is the passage where the King of Babylon is called Lucifer (Day Star) and described as “fallen from heaven” after coveting the throne of God. But what should be readily apparent is that Isaiah is giving us a prophetic critique of empire by using the king of Babylon as a personification for the whole imperial project. This is quite clear from a simple reading of the text. Throughout Scripture (and especially in the book of Revelation) Babylon remains a prophetic symbol of empire and the kingdom of Satan.

Here are a few thoughts from Isaiah 14…

In prophetic Scripture the satanic is closely associated with empire. Empires are rich and powerful nations which believe they have a right to rule other nations and a manifest destiny to shape the world according to their agenda. God regards this as a transgression upon his sovereignty. What empires claim for themselves, God promises to his Son. The throne of God and political empire will always be in opposition to one another. God and Satan will always be in opposition to one another.

God loves nations. God has appointed the diversity of nations. But God hates empires. Empires seek a hegemony producing an unholy homogeny. This is a satanic corruption of the peace of God. The kingdom of God produces peace in the midst of rich and diverse cultures and nations. Satanic empire seeks to enforce “peace” through hegemonic “sameness.” This eventually results in resentment, retaliation, and war. The imperial/satanic project is always destined to fall. Thus the prophets continually cry, Babylon is fallen, is fallen! Through the animosity they engender among other nations, empires always sow the seed of their own eventual destruction. The prophets identify this as the judgment of God.

Isaiah understood that Israel would be deported to Babylon. This was seen as a “prison sentence” to be served for Israel’s sins. But when the sentenced was served, Isaiah said Israel would take up a taunt against their oppressor, Babylon (personified in the king of Babylon).

This is what we find in Isaiah 14:1-23. I encourage you to read it carefully.

Some observations…

Babylon is judged by God for ruling nations in anger. Ruling and oppressing other nations is the basic definition of empire. (vs. 1-6)

The fall of the empire results in the whole earth being at rest and quiet. (vs. 7)

The environment itself rejoices at Babylon’s fall because the empire no longer exploits natural resources. Empires are always arrogant in their environmental degradation; empires view the earth as theirs and not the Lord’s. (vs. 8)

Babylon will now join other nations that have already fallen. In Sheol the kings of these fallen nations taunt the king of Babylon saying, “You too have become as weak as we! You have become like us!” Of course, this is the inevitable fate of empires, despite their arrogant claim of being “exceptional.” Both Scripture and history bear witness to this. (vs. 9-11)

The real problem with empire is the hubris that impels them to impinge upon the sovereignty of God by seeking to rule other nations. This is condemned by the prophet as seeking to be like God. Empires seek to raise their throne (national sovereignty) to a level reserved for God. This is the essence and a primary origin of the satanic. (vs. 12-14)

But in reaching for the heavens (the throne of God), Babylon is fallen, is fallen. This is the constant prophetic cry against empire. (vs. 15-16)

Empires practice the propaganda of calling destruction “peace.” Isaiah says Babylon made the world like a desert and overthrew its cities. Many centuries later the Roman historian Tacitus would record the British chieftain, Calgacus, as saying, “Rome makes a desert and calls it peace.” I’m quite sure Calgacus never read Isaiah, but they were saying the same thing about the propaganda of empire. (vs. 17)

Isaiah criticizes Babylon for holding foreign prisoners indefinitely; for not letting the foreign prisoners return home. (vs. 17b)

All empires have an expiration date. God degrees their demise, lest they “rise and possess the earth, and fill the face of the world with cities.” Babylon and New Jerusalem seek the same thing, but they go about it in completely different ways—one is beastly, the other is lamb-like. (vs. 18-21)

God himself rises up against empires because what they claim as their manifest destiny, God has promised to his Christ. (vs. 22-23)

The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. —Revelation 11:15

These are just quick observations with much being left unsaid; to say it well would require book-length treatment. But I think the connection between the origin of Satan and the rise of empire is a very significant revelation in Scripture.

Selah.

BZ

(The artwork is Babylon by Nicholas Peart.)

Leaving Country and Kin

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred…”
And Abram went. (Genesis 12:1, 4)

In the story the Bible tells it’s Abraham who sends the narrative in a new direction—from a steady migration away from God, to a journey into the Unknown and toward God. Prior to Abraham what do we find in the story? Adam and Eve expelled from Paradise, Cain killing Abel and founding human civilization with bloody hands, a violent world under a flood of judgment, and finally Babylon rising in rebellion to God. It’s a world moving away from God.

Enter Abraham.
Faith man.
Walking man.
Friend of God.
Patriarch of a new humanity.

Rabbinic tradition tells us Abraham’s father was an idol maker. Well, there’s no doubt that Abraham grew up in a nation and family populated by a pantheon of utilitarian gods—useful gods who could be called upon and cajoled, controlled and manipulated; little gods who could be courted and counted upon for the maintenance of the status quo.

It was none of these gods that called Abraham to leave country and kin. The gods of Babylon would never do that! They were, in fact, the creation of country of kin, or if you prefer, the deification of country and kin.

But this God, this speaking God, this El Shaddai, this Yahweh, this “I AM” calls Abraham to leave country and kin…and Abraham does.

This is what makes Abraham both great and the pattern for every believer thereafter.

We are all products of country and kin. We become the self that our national culture and family identity forms us to be. This is unavoidable. It’s not necessarily bad, it’s part and parcel with becoming a human being. To become a self we require a language, a culture, a set of values, a community, a certain identity—all of this comes from our country and kin. But this is also necessarily inadequate for those who want to become the people of God.

To become the people of God always involves a call away from country and kin.

Always.

And it always takes faith to heed the call to leave country and kin. It’s probably the hardest thing we’ll ever do.

If we lack the faith of Abraham we will try to hustle God into allowing us to stay with country and kin and still receive the promised blessing. God will not do this.

(Though we try convince ourselves otherwise, and may even begin to believe that one of the god’s crafted in our family idol shop is God.)

No, Abraham must leave country and kin.

When Abraham does this, he makes two crucial discoveries:

1. God is present everywhere.

2. Abraham is alien everywhere.

This God who called Abraham differed from his father’s gods in his invisibility. Invisibility is part of God’s omnipresence. Because God is not precisely there, he can be always here, which is, to say,  everywhere. In leaving his country and kin, Abraham discovered that God was not confined to nationality or ethnicity—he is everywhere. The sins of nationalism and racism are partly rooted in the unwillingness to recognize that God is everywhere.

But this newly discovered phenomenon of God being everywhere made Abraham an alien everywhere. To leave country and kin to become a follower of the living God means that national and family identity have experienced a profound subordination to an infinitely higher reality—the reality of being a child of God. To see yourself as truly a child of God makes national and family identity mere accidentals. “Home” takes on a new and transcendent meaning. Being at home everywhere is closely related to being an alien everywhere. This has something to do with God’s insistence that his people pay special attention to caring for aliens, because there is a sense in which we are all aliens.

Of course how we live out our own experience of Abraham’s call will likely vary significantly from Abraham’s actual experience. Most will not be called to physically relocate to another nation (though some will). But we are all called to move beyond the cultural and familial assumptions about God we have inherited from country and kin. To put it more bluntly and in a specific context: To continue the journey of faith, the American Christian will eventually be called to leave the “American Jesus” who is little more than a hired spokesperson used to endorse the cultural assumptions of Americanism. Thinking that God can be nationalized so as to prioritize the economic interests of your own particular country is a practice characteristic of Babylon, but discarded in the faith of Abraham. (Eventually the requisite political mantra of, “God bless America,” will begin to sound a little weird in your ears, a bit too much like God can be conscripted for the service of our national interests. The Abrahamic covenant fulfilled in Christ is that all nations are blessed.)

This is why Abraham lives the rest of his life as both an alien and the friend of God.

So…

Leave your country and kin.

Find God everywhere.

Be at home everywhere.

Become an alien everywhere.

Become the friend of God.

Of course this is not easy. That’s why it’s called faith. If it’s easy, it may be many things—including a personal religion cobbled together in the family idol shop—but it’s not faith! Richard Rohr puts it well when he says…

“If change and growth are not programmed into your spirituality, if
there are not serious warnings about the blinding nature of fear and
fanaticism, your religion will always end up worshiping the status
quo and protecting your present ego position and personal
advantage—as if it were God!” —Richard Rohr, “Falling Upward”

The faith of Abraham is the faith that leaves country and kin in order to find God in greater truth.

The faith of Abraham is the faith that subordinates all loyalties to the living God including the most demanding loyalties of country and kin.

The faith of Abraham is willing to live as an alien everywhere if this is what it takes to distinguish God from the idols of country and kin.

The faith of Abraham is what expands the blessing of God from my country and my kin, to all the families of the earth being blessed.

The faith of Abraham subordinates the family of Terah to the family of God.

The faith of Abraham forsakes the city of Babylon to find the New Jerusalem.

The faith of Abraham is the faith that finds its fulfillment in a life of following Christ.

Amen.

BZ

(The artwork is Abraham and the Three Angels by Marc Chagall)

___________________________________________________________

The Advent of Imagination
by Brian Zahnd

Are we lacking in imagination, we children of Cain
We of the ancient, worn-out myopic Idea
(Long since unworthy of that noble name)
The horrid idea born a bastard east of Eden—
Kill Abel and pretend we don’t know he’s our brother
Kill Abel and pretend we don’t know better?

Are we so appallingly lacking in imagination
That we have no freedom because we have no choices?
That which has been is what will be
That which is done is what will be done
There is nothing new under the sun
Thus spake the Preacher who lost his imagination
Thus chanted the Preacher in his mantra of despair.
(What we need is a greater than Solomon to arrive on the scene!)

ARE WE SO LACKING IN IMAGINATION?!
That no sooner do we unlock the secrets of the atom
(The building blocks of our universe we call home)
Than we use our (forbidden?) knowledge to build hellish bombs
Big enough to kill Abel a million at a time…and call it “progress”?

The zeitgeist is against us
That spirit of the age
That vile specter of feigned inevitability
Brazenly telling us, “Aye, but you have no choice.”

If we dare to dream an Isaiah-dream
(Swords morphing to plowshares, spears made pruning hooks)
If we dare to sing the song of angels
(Peace on earth, goodwill toward men)
If we dare to bless those whom Jesus blesses
(Calling peacemakers the children of God)
We’re derided and dismissed as “impractical”
(By the worshipers at the pragmatic altar)
Called foolish, even dangerous, dreamers
(By those whose dreams are censored by empire)
Called bleeding hearts
(By those whose hearts of stone cannot shed a tear, much less bleed)

But what’s a bit of ridicule if it comes with the liberation of imagination?
I for one am ready to be called an impractical, dreamy bleeding heart (or worse)
If it means we stop justifying the sacrifice of Abel on the altar of pragmatism…
(Or any other Ism.)

And so I ask you—
Test your imagination
Does the status quo (the existing state of affairs)
Have to remain an idol pledged allegiance to?
Has the way we’ve run the world since the (bloodstained) dawn of civilization
Worked out so very well we must remain wedded to it till death do us part?
What if the god Status Quo is guilty of spousal abuse?
Cannot we not sue for divorce
And marry another?
Behold, the bridegroom cometh! Go forth to meet him!

BZ

(The painting is Boundless Imagination by Hessam Abrishami)