BILLTESKA

“If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” A silly thing to say in a foreign policy speech. The logical fallacy of the false dichotomy, as though there were not shades of support and opposition in any relationship. Yet today Jesus tells His disciples the same thing: Whoever is not against us is with us.

I say it’s the same thing, because the two are formal corollaries. In logic, the contrapositive is always true. If A implies B, then NOT B implies NOT A. So if whoever is not against us is with us, then whoever is not with us is NOT not against us. (In other words, whoever is not with us is just plain against us.) But somehow Jesus’ observation still feels just the opposite of the belligerent, take-it-or-leave-it posturing of Presidential folly.

What Jesus says is meant to approve and include people who are not formally or expressly allied with His disciples ~ precisely those shades and nuances that The Leader’s remark would exclude by insisting that other countries are enemies if they do not enlist under his command. And so, for a while we got “freedom fries” and wine-dumping. Maybe the disastrous Leader was using language that he thought would resonate with his biblically-literalist political base. But if so, it is terrible to think that he is willing to compare himself with our Lord. I am tempted to fall into the trap of asserting the opposite: that whoever is with The Leader is against Jesus! But I try to remember that Every man acts according to his own understanding, and God alone knows who is rightly guided. So, I could be wrong about this. I am a fallibilist.

I have just learned that this is a type of home-grown, pragmatist epistemology, pioneered by Charles Saunders Peirce. As far as I understand it, the idea is that we can’t be certain of anything – including the basic scientific assumption that the future will be like the past. This is especially true of social sciences. It is also true of theology, as practiced by Anglicans. Peirce was an Episcopalian who came back to Communion in mid-life, much to his own surprise, and I like to think that his fallibilism was inspired by the same hesitancy to shut out the mystery, whether by reason or by dogma, expressed by Richard Hooker, who said of the 16th Century, two things there be that greatly trouble this present age: the one that Rome cannot and the other that Geneva will not err.

Fr. William Countryman has observed that willingness to err is essential to Anglicanism. That is, unlike Rome we do not imagine that God preserves us from error in our very nature as Church, nor, like Calvinism, do we think that grace prevents our will from choosing it. We say that we might be wrong. And so, we are in an asymmetrical relationship with those who are certain about theology. You have to be comfortable, to some extent, with uncertainty and ambiguity – even with paradox and downright contradiction – to be an Anglican. That’s why I think it not insignificant that Peirce was an Episcopalian, even though he was somewhat uncomfortable as one.

He isn’t the only one. I think it is kind of funny that our Episcopal lectionary permits us to excuse ourselves from listening to James’ tirade against the rich. We are, after all, traditionally the church of the upper class establishment. What are we supposed to do with this bit of Holy Writ? Well, choke on it, I think James would say! If we are content to be rich rather than to use our riches for the relief of the poor; if we are unwilling to lay all our wealth at the foot of the Cross, then as far as James the Brother of God is concerned, we can go to hell!

And what is true of rich individuals is also true of rich nations. We had better stop confusing our own avarice with divine favor. If Americans have more than anybody else it may be a sign not of God’s love for a righteous people, but of that people’s unrighteous, ruthless greed; the same kind of intolerable arrogance that is capable of saying “if you’re not with us, you’re against us,” which leads to the appalling wickedness we witnessed in Congress last week, which calls out to heaven for vengeance.

And the cries of the oppressed have reached the ears of the Lord of Hosts!

I once heard the late Russian émigré theologian, Fr. John Meyendorff, explain the difference between the way Eastern and Western Christianity tend to look at the Fall. For the West, it’s forensic: Adam sinned by disobedience and got what he deserved, the death sentence for himself and all of his descendants. Death is the result of sin. The Orthodox East, by contrast tends to think in more mystical and cosmic terms: by eating the forbidden fruit, humanity acquired the knowledge of good and evil. That is, we entered into an intimate relationship with good and evil; we began to have a conscience; we began to have an uncomfortable feeling that it isn’t ok to walk around naked, and we began to be ashamed of some of the things we do. We also became aware that one day we would die.

Our reflection on our own mortality produced every kind of defense mechanism our clever human imagination could contrive to take our mind off our newborn anxiety. These distractions are what we call sin: lust for power and for pleasure and for possession ~ even for knowledge ~ for anything, fury when we are frustrated at getting them, and cold hatred of those who seem to be better at getting them than ourselves. Fr. Meyendorff offered an analogy: We are like two prisoners in a cell with food enough to sustain only one, so they fight to the death. One murders the other in order to survive. Captivity to death produces sin. Sin is the result of death.

Today’s passage from Wisdom is a pretty horrifying description of this captivity. The wicked, who are convinced that this life is all there is, decide that they might as well whoop it up and “gather rosebuds before they wither” (a metaphor that was later made famous by a 17th Century English poet). But the desperate dark side of this merry-making is made clear in the older passage. The wicked cannot get enough of anything to quell their anxiety. And they look with murderous rage on one who is not anxious, not devoured by their addiction, and they plot all kinds of cruelty against him. This insanity is the original meaning of the term passion in its spiritual sense. It means suffering, and it is precisely the kind of insatiable craving that Buddha taught was the source of all suffering. Animals are not capable of this kind of wickedness, because animals, being ignorant of it, are not captives of death, as we are. Animals may be subject to emotion, but not to passion.

Somebody once asked me, in a jocund way, “So what’s the good news?” I thought fast and replied, “Well, your sins are forgiven and you’re going to live forever.” (He wasn’t expecting that, but then he DID ask for it.) “Boy, that really IS good news!” he said. And if a person can accept it, can trust it ~ if one can change one’s mind about being the captive of death: if one can, in scriptural language, repent and believe the gospel, then anxiety evaporates and sin is put to flight. There is no more reason for dispute or conflict, or covetousness and envy, or lust for anything, or violence and murder and war. Because there is no more anxiety, no more craving, no more passion, all these absorptions begin to seem infantile and a little silly for grown-ups to bother with.

I think this is what James means when he says that friendship with the world is enmity with God.

Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?

[once again: among you, perhaps]

You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And
you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and
conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive,
because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.
Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with
God?

The world here is, of course, not creation but the reality of human life as apprehended by human consciousness in thrall to death. And the unanswered prayers are not our petitions in our necessities, but unworthy appeals for help in denying death by acquisition, on the order of Janis Joplin’s memorable song: “O Lord, won’tcha buy me a Mercedez-Benz?”

The disciples arguing among themselves on the way to Capernaum are still in that death-bound consciousness. Greater and lesser prestige still means quite a bit to those ambitious young men. Harmless enough, even kind of cute. But they have just taken the first step in the direction of hell: by their quarrelling, they are summoning death to make a covenant with him. Jesus’ answer to their folly is poetic. They are acting like children, so he picks up a child and advises them to become even more like one. I think He was teasing them. Childhood was considered an unfortunate condition. Adults did not adopt a sentimental and indulgent attitude toward children, and rabbis did not dote on them in public. No one would voluntarily TRY to assume the status of a child. I’ll bet part of what our Lord was trying to convey was a chiding comparison between the contumacious disciples and the wretched child. “You guys are just like him. You have reduced yourselves to his status by your infantile competition and disputing.” By this little performance-art parable He was saying “You know what? With all your anxiety about status, you are placing yourselves on the level of this urchin. By seeking the first places, you have secured for yourselves the last! But, hey, go for it! Down at his level of innocence, there is also no anxiety, only boundless hope in the invincibility of life and the triumph of love.”

If one really adopts that consciousness, that trust in the benign rule of the universe, with which every child is born, trust in what Jesus called the Reign of God, then one is no longer anxious about earthly things, matters of status and possession and all the currency of the covenant with death, because one loves things heavenly. And that doesn’t mean otherworldly things: not only the everlasting life to come, but the eternal life that begins even now as we are placed among things that are passing away, at the moment we accept that our sins are forgiven and we are going to live forever, once we accept the Good News that we are free from death’s prison, and that our life is infinite. We no longer have to worry about the constant flux of nature because we see that it is possible to hold fast to those things that shall endure, namely love and peace and joy, the heavenly things.

The only thing that can keep us from enjoying this life even now, as we are placed among things that are passing away is what the Christian tradition calls the passions and what Buddhism calls desire: the desperate grasping for those very things that are passing away. But the willingness to grow up and let them go is the entrance into real and unconquerable life.

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

More Isaiah. This time the Songs of the Suffering Servant, also familiar from Messiah of G.F. Handel:

He gave his back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that pulleth out the hair.
He hid not His face from shame and spitting.

This right after a continuation of last week’s theme of listening:

The Lord GOD has given me
the tongue of a teacher, that
I may know how to sustain
the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens--
wakens my ear
to listen as those who are taught.
The Lord GOD has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.

You must listen and learn before you can teach anything. There has to be some kind of communion in the heart, if there is to be any useful work.

The King James Version records Jesus as saying The Kingdom of God is within you. And it’s not a mistranslation – not exactly. The phrase can mean that. But the Greek is broader, more ambiguous. First of all, the you is plural. He was speaking to all the disciples, not just to one individual. Secondly, the preposition, within is really just in, and can also mean among, when applied to a group. So, this dictum, so often used as a proof-text for quietism (for those who want faith in God to be a purely private, inner matter with no boat-rocking, external implications) really doesn’t say what is implied by the old Authorized Version. It can just as well mean that the Reign of God is to be found amongst the disciples, in their interpersonal relationships and in the new way of organizing human society that the Messiah initiates. But, of course, kings are usually not interested in radically new ways of organizing their societies, so we get within in the version presented the most High and Dread Prince, King James I.

So, interpretation has some pretty far-reaching implications for what it may mean to follow Jesus. On the one hand, it could mean a purely individual, inner life of faith; on the other hand it could mean a dedication to a life of external struggle for social justice, that is, for the Reign of peace and justice on earth as in heaven.

Or, it could mean both, as I think.

Today, we also hear for the second time the clear, bracing words of the James. It is traditionally attributed to St. James the Just, not one of the twelve but the kinsman of Jesus called in the East the Brother of God, who was the first Bishop of Jerusalem. But whoever wrote it had a bone to pick with Paul, and it has always been controversial. Several ancient authorities questioned its inclusion in the canon of scripture. Luther grumbled and chafed at it. Mostly because of today’s passage, and the theological question of justification that so exercised him and his time. Now, if you want to know more about this interesting question, just google “justification by faith” and you’ll get a fine Wikipedia article, as I did. A good primer. There you will learn that it is still a controversy, and that the Church, as a whole, has never spoken dogmatically on the matter. Lutherans, Calvinists, Roman Catholics, and Orthodox all have slightly different positions. And some of the differences are not so slight.

It seems clear that Luther didn’t like James because it seemed to him to contradict Paul and the teaching of justification by faith alone. Paul says we are justified by grace alone – the pure gift if God, which we cannot and do not deserve. There is nothing we can do to justify ourselves. James, by contrast, says, “show me your faith and I will show you my works.” This seemed intolerably brazen and boastful to Luther. But if you think about it, how, exactly, IS anyone to display faith other than by doing something? A mere claim to have faith is just that. It doesn’t demonstrate anything. That is James’ point. And Luther gnashes his teeth. Furthermore, as James said in last week’s epistle, what earthly good is it to “hear the Word” if you don’t “do” it. Be doers of the Word and not hearers only, he advises. And Luther rends his garment.

Here’s what I learned on Wikipedia: there’s a new school of Pauline interpretation, prominent among whose scholars is our own N.T. Wright, the Lord Bishop of Durham. This new view revises the reading of Luther (and of Augustine, upon whom Luther based his) by revising the traditional Christian notion that Paul regarded the Pharisees as seeking to justify themselves by their observance of the Law. Salvation by works was supposed to have been the mistake of the Pharisees, and pharisaism came to mean a hypocritical observance of externals, disguising a reprehensible inner life. The Gospel itself is certainly patient of such an interpretation. Jesus, after all, compared the Pharisees to whitewashed tombs, gleaming in purity outside but harboring “all manner of corruption” within. And Luther’s point was that no amount of whitewash would suffice to freshen the stench inside. No justification by works. The very clarity and unassailable logic of James ~ show me you faith and I’ll show you my works ~ was enough for Luther to wish to demote him from the canon of authoritative scripture.

Now comes the New Perspective on Paul, with Bishop Wright and others. Actually, I think the earlier generation, led by the Swedish Lutheran, Krister Stendahl paved the way for this revision, according to which Paul was not opposed to the Pharisees but one of them, as he said himself. What we call his conversion was not a repudiation of that identity, but a new insight into it. Luther was all concerned with 16th Century abuses of the Roman penitential system and popular religiosity ~ the mercantile calculus of indulgences, and so on, and the apocalyptic corruption of certain Renaissance cardinals and popes. He tended to read Augustine and Paul from that perspective. He confused the Pharisees with his own immediate adversaries, and so have we until the “new perspective” appeared. According to that, Luther was mistaken in thinking the Pharisees sought to “earn their salvation” or to “justify themselves by their works.” Rather, all their detailed observances were signs of an inner reality, an expression of the relationship God had established with the people of Israel: the Covenant. It wasn’t that the Pharisees thought they could gain God’s favor by ritual observance (in the way a medieval Christian pilgrim or crusader might have thought): just as Paul said, the divine favor had already been bestowed in the Covenant. The Pharisees were just trying to fulfill their end of the agreement. If Paul has a quarrel with the Pharisees, it is in his observation that the observance of the externals of the Law does not fulfill the whole of the Covenant. We can’t fulfill our end of the agreement by obeying the Law externally.

But, as James observed, that doesn’t mean that deeds of justice and mercy are unimportant. Sure, they must proceed from a heart made righteous by God’s grace. As today’s Collect says, in good reformed language, without you we are not able to please you. But anyone who really is in a state of justification will necessarily behave in certain ways, namely, doing good deeds. In fact, such a person will not even want do anything else. (As Augustine advised, “Love God, and do as you please.”) But if there are no good works, it’s a pretty good sign that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, no matter what is claimed about faith. Good fruit is the sign of a healthy tree, and if it doesn't appear, there is probably something wrong with the tree. Likewise, good works are the fruit of justification, not the currency with which we can buy it.

So, within vs. among is a false dichotomy. If God reigns within your heart, there will be justice and peace among you. Moreover, there cannot be such external peace without the inner relationship. I do not think this means a particular theology or dogmatic construct. We cannot purchase a right relationship with God by holding correct theological opinions ~ by doing the external work of professing orthodox belief. A Jew, a Buddhist, and Muslim, a Hindu, an indigenous animist can be justified just as a Christian can. Christians, after all, do not believe that we are justified by Christianity, but by Christ. God help us, even a Mormon can be justified, or an atheist! Not by works, including the work of thinking a certain way about God or the work of knowing that you are justified. To be justified by faith certainly does not mean to think you are just. God can reign in your heart without your knowing it: incognito, as it were.

Jesus said, By their fruits shall ye know them. The faithful, like the healthy tree, are those who produce the fruits of justification: personal mercy and social justice.

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