Tag: Human Plight

By Faith We Are Healed

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Through nearly every outlet of our socials, we are bombarded by health and wealth influencers, bio and cash hackers promising us sure fire ways to get and stay fit and rich. Whether it’s a food to avoid or consume in high quantities, an elixir or potion to drink no matter how noxious, or a revealed secret that this or that industry doesn’t want you to know, these influencers and hackers will sell you whatever you want to hear except the truth. They will focus on you, making your ill health and unwell-being, your lack of prosperity and thriving your fault, and if you can just do this one thing, consume that one ingredient, you will change your life and, even, refuse the grim reaper his visit. Keeping you consumed with yourself and what you lack while convincing you that success is just one root vegetable away, allows these charlatans to keep you asleep and numb to the real problems of the human condition.

The problem is neither one’s inability to secure health and wealth nor the natural occurrence of death. Our issue, fundamentally, is our obsession with power (domination)[ii] and violence.[iii] We are obsessed with consuming: we consume creation, we consume each other, we even consume ourselves. And by “consume” I do not strictly mean our insatiable hunger for things, but our insatiable hunger for power and domination wherein we use war and violence to “secure” our privilege and greatness. There is nothing that can stand in our way that we can’t and won’t destroy, even ourselves and the very ground under our feet.

In this septic and toxic atmosphere, it’s no wonder that we can barely keep our relations intact. When each person is a consumer, consuming what is necessary to stay on top, no one is safe and everyone is a potential threat. This very mentality and orientation in the world causes fractures in our relationships with ourselves, with one another, with creation, and, most importantly for us, with God. (Yes, even God becomes an ideology to be consumed and, if God gets too big, someone to be dominated and forced to do our will.) It is not so much our bad habits and our good ones that will bring us closer to or farther from death; it’s our relationship with power and violence; it’s our willingness to see everything and everyone else as a means to an end, a crumb for consumption.

Isaiah 25:1-9

O Lord, you are my God;
I will exalt you, I will praise your name;
for you have done wonderful things,
plans formed of old, faithful and sure.
For you have made the city a heap,
the fortified city a ruin;
the palace of aliens is a city no more,
it will never be rebuilt.
Therefore strong peoples will glorify you;
cities of ruthless nations will fear you.

Isaiah’s opening words here are a song of thanksgiving offered from the broader community.[iv] Even though Isaiah speaks in the first-person singular, he speaks for the great Israel and Judah—as the prophet does in their prophetic role as representatives of both God and the people. Isaiah credits God with great and beneficent action, action that is so strong that human made fortifications, palaces, and human manufactured security cannot withstand God’s action, especially God’s action on behalf of the people who need God to act.

For you have been a refuge to the poor,
a refuge to the needy in their distress,
a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat.
When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm,
the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place,
you subdued the heat with the shade of clouds;
the song of the ruthless was stilled.

When the poor and needy cry out, God is there, says Isaiah. Make no mistake, this includes the flora and fauna of creation. Isaiah does not resort to pleas for the rulers of the kingdom of humanity to act right because these very ones are spiritually ill because their politic is driven by consumption and their weapons are violence and war;[v] Isaiah knows there is stronger medicine needed to correct this sickness[vi] plaguing Israel and her people, especially the widow and orphan, the hungry and thirsty, and the ostracized and marginalized.[vii] There is no political alignment with another nation or people that will solve Israel’s problems and such alignment will only prove deadly;[viii] alliances with other nations provoke more consumption and goad those so allied into more violence and war. In other words, alliances are not part of the cure, but the disease.

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,
of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.

Israel and Judah have (repeatedly) turned to their own devices, wisdom, and strength to try to build a (false) sense of security through deals with other peoples and nations; according to Isaiah, they must only turn to Abba God who is the one who will establish and make for God’s self a people who walk in God’s light. Isaiah makes it clear that these ones—the elect of God—are to live by faith (even if it is difficult); faith is the basis of Israel’s and Judah’s life—life with God, life with themselves, life with creation, life abundant.[ix] It is not by alliances within the kingdom of humanity that will bring the desired security and prosperity; these will only bring war, violence, and death. Faith in God anchors the one who believes in the God who cannot fail to provide comfort and security for God’s people.[x] God is the only one who can inoculate Israel and Judah against the infection of consumption and her children (violence and domination). How? Faith renders the one who has it dependent on God and not on their own strength; once the believer is here in this humble space, the desperate need to be on top, to dominate, to consume, to use violence clears up and out. In this way, faith makes space for something new because it demands the one who has it to release the old, tried, and failing ways of the kingdom of humanity; therein space is made for an interruption by the divine Spirit bringing long awaited redemption from this human sickness.[xi]

Then Abba God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God;
we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

God will bring God’s justice; human made alliances and pacts with other human-made kingdoms will not, these will only bring more war and violence, more death of human beings. God heals God’s people, God soothes those who weep in sorrow and sadness, God cloths those disgraced by human violence in divine garments of mercy and righteousness.[xii] God will bring justice where humans within the kingdom of humanity bring only injustice and therein God is exalted and glorified.[xiii] As the irregularity of human injustice is interrupted by God’s justice, human beings are liberated from the captivity to violence and domination, born into love out of consuming indifference, brought into new life out of death.[xiv]

Conclusion

On this day we take a moment to reflect on the way our sickness has ravaged both the land and the people who were cared for and worked this land before us. This is a day that reminds us how much we need and are dependent on Jesus and our faith in him; he is our cure, he is our comfort, he is our way in this world as we work with him to keep human life human (Paul Lehmann). Today, it makes the most sense to give those whom we’ve harmed the final word about the destructive power of consumption, how it plagues humankind, and the divine food that brings life.

Everything was water except a very small piece of ground. On this were the eagle and Coyote. Then the turtle swam to them. They sent it to dive for the earth at the bottom of the water. The turtle barely succeeded in reaching the bottom and touching it with its foot. When it came up again, all the earth seemed washed out.

Coyote looked closely at its nails. At last, he found a grain of earth. Then he and the eagle took this and laid it down. From it they made the earth as large as it is. From the earth, they also made six men and six women. They sent these out in pairs in different directions and the people separated.

After a time the eagle sent the Coyote to see what the people were doing. Coyote came back and said: “They are doing something bad. They are eating the earth. One side is already gone.”

The eagle said: “That is bad. Let us make something for them to eat. Let us send the dove to find something.”

The dove went out. It found a single grain of meal. The eagle and Coyote put this down on the ground. Then the earth became covered with seeds and fruit. Now they told the people to eat these. When the seeds were dry and ripe the people gathered them. Then the people increased and spread all over. But the water is still under the world.[xv]

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] See Carter Heyward, The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism, 49-64.

[iii] See Heyward, The Seven Deadly Sins, 127-139.

[iv] Brevard S. Childs, Isaiah: A Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Louisville: WJK, 2001), 183. “The opening verses are classified form-critically as a psalm of thanksgiving.”

[v] Abraham K. Heschel, The Prophets (New York: JPS, 1962), 73. “Politics is based on the power of the sword. But Isaiah as waiting for the day when nations ‘shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’ Alliances involve preparation for war, but Isaiah was horrified by the brutalities and carnage which war entails. In his boundless yearning he had a vision of the day when ‘nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’ (2:4).”

[vi] Heschel, Prophets, 172-173. “Dislike for the world or disparagement of civilization is alien to the prophet. His attachment to God calls upon him to be involved with humanity. Yet in the face of idle and false imposition, he announces the contingency and insecurity of civilization, the sickness and liability of man. Israel is under judgment; the covenant with God must not be taken as immunity from judgment.”

[vii] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “Isaiah could not accept politics as a solution, since politics itself, with its arrogance and disregard of justice, was a problem. When mankind is, as we would say, spiritually sick, something more radical than political sagacity is needed to solve the problem of security.”

[viii] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “For the moment a clever alignment of states may be of help. In the long run, it is bound to prove futile.”

[ix] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “Indeed, it is hard to live by faith. But Isaiah insisted that one cannot live without faith…faith is not an easy or convenient path. There are frustrations in store for him who expects God to succeed at every turn in history.”

[x] Heschel, Prophets, 73. “War spawns death. But Isaiah was looking to the time when the Lord ‘will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces (25:8…). Israel’s security lies in the covenant with God, not in covenants with Egypt or other nations. The mysterious power of faith maintains: God alone is true protections. Such power will not collapse in the hour of disaster…”

[xi] Heschel, Prophets, 94. “Something new, an outburst of the Spirit, will initiate redemption.”

[xii] Heschel, Prophets, 214. “The grandeur and majesty of God does not come to expression in the display of ultimate sovereignty and power, but rather in rendering righteousness and mercy.”

[xiii] Heschel, Prophets, 214. “Isaiah’s declaration does not speak about values, and its intention is not to assert that holiness and justice are very much alike, or that justice is holy, or that holiness is just. Isaiah speaks about God, and his intention is to say that the Lord of Heaven and earth, of nature and history, finds His true exaltation in justice.”

[xiv] Heschel, Prophets, 215. “If justice is but a category, a conformity, then injustice must be regarded as an irregularity, a deviation from the norm. But justice is like a mighty stream, and to defy it is to block God’s almighty surge. The moralists discuss, suggest, counsel; the prophets proclaim, demand, insist.”

[xv] http://straightarrow.org/stories/indigenous-stories/yokut/the-beginning-of-the-world-wukchamni-yokut/

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Epiphany: God for Us

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

At times, in the cool, dark of January and after all the festivities have wound down and the decorations and ornaments have been packed up, one can feel alone, unseen, unheard. Going from Thanksgiving to New Years is a tour of parties and engagements, concerts and events, gatherings and celebrations. One can feel swept up and out of banalities of regular life, being entertained from one moment to another.

As a parent of three children, each of whom is in a different stage of education, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of sweet returns and homecomings as semesters end and all the kids come home to stay, the onslaught of various concerts and parties threatening to overlap, and the rush of shopping, dining, traveling, and being ushered from one family visit to the next. This energy carries all the way through the first week of January. And then… Silence. And everything slows all…. the…. way…. down as if being caught in mud.

It’s not just parents who suffer the experience of the radical shifts between up and down, loud and quiet, active and inactive. Everyone feels it. The first few weeks of January, in the stillness, darkness, and coldness of the month, pose the greatest challenges for mental health; these can be the hardest weeks for our friends and family working with and through depression and grief, sorrow and loss, anxiety and despair, loneliness and alienation. The big drop after the cessation of the holiday feasts and fests paves the way for a dark cloud to loom over vulnerable humanity.

Thus, our orientation outside of ourselves is even more important as we tumble out of celebrations and land on that regular and blah day to day. Last week, Luke guided us to refocus our attention on the initial vibrations of the beginning movement of God’s mission of the divine revolution of love, life, and liberation in the tween Jesus. Today, Matthew continues that refocusing outside of ourselves and on to another. Matthew tells us a story of the divine Son, Jesus the Christ, who identifies with us in all aspects of our life from the greatest of great to the lowest of lows.

Matthew 3:13-17

Jesus has no need for a baptism of repentance[ii] like the one Matthew tells us John is offering to those gathering to and in the river Jordan.[iii] And yet, Jesus shows up. Matthew tells us, At that time Jesus arrives from Galilee to the Jordan toward John to be baptized by him (v13). The sinless one, the Son of Humanity and the Son of God, shows up for the purpose of being baptized by John like everyone else. However, everyone else in that river needed to confess, needed to be washed clean, needed to repent.[iv] But Jesus is not like everyone else; John knows this. John nearly refuses Jesus this event, as Matthew tells us, But John was hindering him, saying, “I, I have need to be baptized by you, and you, you come to me?!” (v.14). Our English version makes it sound like John was speaking it as if from a script but not acting on it. I think he was acting on it with all the passion of a Palestinian Jewish man. With the emphasis embedded in the original language, John is (literally) astounded[v] by Jesus coming to him; it wouldn’t be farfetched to imagine Jesus’s cousin holding Jesus back by the shoulders with wet hands, confessing such words. John’s astonishment and confession to Jesus showing up in the Jordan will be echoed in Peter’s similar astonishment and confession when Jesus goes to wash his feet. God on the move is always on the move in a way that defies human reason and common sense.

Jesus (lovingly) replies to John’s passion not with chastisement or offense, but acknowledges that John’s not wrong, but here in this moment God is up to something different, something that doesn’t make sense, something that is new, something that will fracture the stagnant and toxic status-quo (the status quo he witnessed all those years ago in his week-long stay in the temple). Matthew tells us, Now, Jesus answered him and said, “You permit me just now; for, in this way, it is fitting for us to fulfill all justice.” At that time, [John] permits him (v15). Jesus links his being baptized to the fulfillment of (divine) justice. But what divine justice is being fulfilled here in the sinless God-man being baptized like a regular sinful human being? It is the justice of God that is fulfilled in identifying[vi] with the plight and predicament of God’s people.[vii] And it is through this identification with God’s people—in their highs and especially their lows—that God’s justice is manifest among and in those who are oppressed (spiritually and politically).[viii] Divine justice, divine righteousness is not about what one has (as if it is something we can possess on our own right); it’s about having a fleshy heart and a humble mind that drives one to live life before God in a human way with the people of God[ix] for the goal of “keeping human life human.”[x]

Matthew continues the story, telling us about what happened after Jesus is baptized, Jesus immediately ascended from the water. And, behold!, the heavens opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove coming upon him. And, behold!, a voice out of heaven saying, “This one is my son, the Beloved, in whom I am well-pleased!” (vv16-17). Something new is afoot and God is making Godself known in and through Jesus ascending out of the water and the dove descending to alight on him. Here we have clear images of new creation, of love, of life, of liberation. Jesus ascends from the midst of the water like his ancestors before him crossing the Red Sea to find themselves liberated from the oppression of Egypt; the dove descends and lands on firm ground that is the Christ, the son of God and the son of Humanity, much like Noah’s dove after the flood.[xi]

But what is significant here is the way God makes it known (directly and without mediation[xii]) that God identifies with Jesus and Jesus identifies with God. This is my son, the Beloved…Jesus identifies with the people and identifies with God. In that God identifies with Jesus, who identifies with the people, means that God identifies with the people in and through Christ. In this way, Jesus represents God to humanity and humanity to God.[xiii] In Jesus the Christ, the son of God and the Son of Humanity, humanity and God are united forever. In this way, humanity, the yous and mes of this world, participate by faith in being the Beloved with whom God is well pleased.

Conclusion

We hear this story every year, but do we pause long enough to consider the significance of Jesus taking a baptism of repentance he didn’t need? There’s no logical conclusion except for his desire (thus, God’s desire) to identify with the plight of humanity in its ups and especially in its downs. The Sinless one identifies with the sinful ones, and it’s this profound and earthy and fleshy identification that marks the very beginning of Jesus’s active ministry. If you’ve ever wondered if God is for you, Epiphany gives us a resounding HECK YES, GOD IS FOR YOU!

And not just for you when you are up, when you are “too blessed to be stressed,” when you are clean, neat, put together, organized, straightened up, physically killing it at work and at the gym, spiritually killing it in your quiet time and charity. Epiphany highlights and emphasizes that God is with us at our worst: in our desperate need to confess, to be washed, to repent. God is with us when our acts are not together, when we can barely get out of bed, when we just can’t anymore, when we are depressed and despairing, when we are consumed with grief and emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual pain, when we bare tremendous burdens of loss and sorrow, when we want to quit and when we do. God is with us when we fail. God is with us when our shoulders and backs feel as if they are about to break with the burdens. And what’s more? God is with us when society is against us, threatens us when we are different, and condemns us because we have need, because we lack, because we can’t rise to the demands of a system dead set on devouring us.

Epiphany is the unmediated voice of God telling you, telling us, that we are unquestioningly, undoubtedly, unconditionally accepted by God because God chose to identify with us on no other condition than God’s love and pleasure made known in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 117. “The first appearance of the adult Jesus in Matthew’s story takes place in the context of John’s baptism, with Jesus as John’s Galilean ‘follower’ … who receives baptism along with the repentant Judean crowds.”

[iii] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 50. “John has been preaching a baptism that signifies repentance. Why would Jesus need to be baptized? What does he need to repent? Our theological tradition has insisted that Jesus is without sin.”

[iv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 51. “Regular ritual washing with water was widely practiced within Judaism and its symbolism of cleansing form sin was understood. This singular experience of ‘baptism’ that John was practicing is more reminiscent of the practice of ‘proselyte baptism.’ When Gentiles converted they were baptized. In extending this practice to everyone, John is in effect declaring that everyone stands in need of conversion, signaling their repentance and turning to God. Even the religious leaders stood in need of baptism.”

[v] Merriam-Webster “Astounded”, “feeling or showing great surprise or wonder”

[vi] France, Matthew, 120. “The most obvious away in which Jesus’ baptism prepares for his mission is by indicating his solidarity with John’s call to repentance in view of the arrival of God’s kingship. By identifying with John’s proclamation Jesus lays the foundation for his own mission to take on where John has left off.”

[vii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 50. “One way we might understand Jesus’ presenting himself for baptism is a sign of his solidarity with sinners. In this context, ‘to fulfill all righteousness’ is to be with God’s people, stand in their place, share in their penitence, live their life, die their death.”

[viii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 50. Righteousness/justice according to Hebrew thought, “It is about the establishment of God’s will that justice should everywhere prevail. God’s righteousness is connected with ‘vindication,’ ‘deliverance,’ and ‘salvation’…God’s righteousness is seen in God’s special regard for those who are powerless or oppressed and stand in need of justice.”

[ix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 50. “Thus righteousness is not to be conceived as a static quality that one possesses (what one is) but rather a matter of what one does in living life before God.”

[x] Paul Lehmann, Ethics in a Christian Context.

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 50-51. “That he is baptized in the Jordan (v. 3) recalls the crossing of the Jordan into the promised land. That when he comes up from the water, the Spirit descends like a ‘dove’ reminds us of the links between water and Spirit in Genesis, as ‘a wind from God swept over the waters’ (Gen.:2). After the flood Noah sends out a dove. Themes of creation and new creation are reverberating here.”

[xii] France, Matthew, 122. Divine voice, “…the most unmediated access to God’s own view of Jesus.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 120. “Further, as Jesus is baptized along with others at the Jordan, he is identified with all those who by accepting John’s baptism have declared their desire for a new beginning with God.” (representation)

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“Nothing Seems to Satisfy”: Craving Solidarity

Luke 18:13d: “‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”

Introduction

Something has to change
Undeniable dilemma
Boredom’s not a burden anyone should bear
Constant over stimulation numbs me
But I would not want you any other way
Just not enough, I need more
Nothing seems to satisfy
I said, I don’t want it, I just need it
To breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive[1]

Who’s in your corner? Who’s on your side? Who’s your “ride or die”? Who’s the Louise to your Thelma?

If you’re having difficulty answering any of those questions, I don’t blame you. Names do not come readily to me, either. Over the course of the past five weeks, it’s become clear we’re in a dire spot, moment, event, era, time, whatever this is right now. The reality is that we sit in the turned-over ground of our obsession with suspicion. We are overrun by sola suspicio running amok. If there is no truth, if it’s all about my productivity, if no one is trustworthy, and if our communities lack substance to nurture where do we find anyone or anything to be for us? If our communities cannot foster relationality and can only dismiss identity and destabilize stability, who is left to be on my side, in my corner, my “ride or die”, my Louise?

I can help you change
Tired moments into pleasure
Say the word and we’ll be
Well upon our way, blend and balance
Pain and comfort, deep within you
Till you will not want me any other way
But it’s not enough, I need more
Nothing seems to satisfy
I said, I don’t want it, I just need it
To breathe, to feel, to know I’m alive[2]

Sola suspicio has its place; but it cannot be where we live, it cannot be our best friend because with sola suspicio we must question and doubt everything and everyone; in this scenario the only people we can trust is ourselves. So, let us arm ourselves with weapons, horde material goods, work until our fingers bleed and our hearts stop, and keep looking over our shoulder for the threat of our replacement. There is no room for love here, there is no room for peace, there is no room for hope, there is no room for faith. There’s just nothing. And so we attempt to numb away the gnawing sensation that there could be more than this.

Something kinda sad about
The way that things have come to be
Desensitized to everything
What became of subtlety?
How can this mean anything to me
If I really don’t feel anything at all? Yeah
I’ll keep digging
Till I feel something[3]

With sola suspicio there is only one emotion left, and it’s a beast: fear. Sola suspicio demands fear. Tromping about waving its banners colored with the status quo and the unimaginative, hollering at the top of its lungs, Sola Suspicio reminds us at every turn: be afraid, nothing is true; be terrified, you are replaceable; be wary, your neighbor is not to be trusted; be alert, are you getting yours? It lures us to consume everything we can get our hands on and then soothes us into a deep post feast sleep coma. But we wake up again and are sent on more wild chases looking for something, anything, to give us sustenance.

We are craving solidarity, but nothing ever satisfies.

Isaiah 53:4-9

Surely he has borne our infirmities
and carried our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have all turned to our own way,
and God has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By a perversion of justice he was taken away.
Who could have imagined his future?
For he was cut off from the land of the living,
stricken for the transgression of my people.
They made his grave with the wicked
and his tomb with the rich,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Isaiah’s prophetic prayer highlights that whether we know it or not, whether we want to admit it or not, something is desperately wrong, and we are weary and faint; starvation does that to the body. This is our plight; this is not the product of divine chastisement; it’s the product of our own hands.[4] We’re caught up in the muck and mire of the tension between being held captive and being complicit in our starvation and the starvation of others. Isaiah says, all have gone astray, we have all turned to our own way.

Today we’re forced to recall the one person who identified deeply with the human predicament fell victim to the clutches of suspicion. Today we remember it was our inability to trust, to hope, to have faith in, and to love God more than ourselves that sent Jesus to suffer death. Today we remember that the son of God and the son of humanity hung on the cross, held by meager nails, a victim of our inability to accurately judge between good and evil. Today we’re reminded that we try soothing our existential hunger with the mythology of the kingdom of humanity: the myths of power, greed, status, and privilege. Today Christ dies because we are afraid, terrified of anything new, loyal to the lies of the status-quo. Today we stand guilty of being willing to pervert justice to our desires, bend it to our whims content with absolutely nothing rather than something.

Conclusion

In our hunger for God, we called out to God and pleaded for God to show up. And God did. God showed up in deep, deep solidarity with us; identifying with us in our weakness and vulnerability by being born and living as one of us. But it was too much for us; Christ exposed our captivity and complicity with destructive structures oriented toward death. And so we told God we wanted something else not-God.

Today God is dead; there’s no solidarity. Today, the church is gone; there’s no community. Today, relationality failed; we’re alone. Today, we sold our identity for 30 shekels; we’re replaceable. Today stability crumbled, and we’re abandoned to the hunger.

(for part 1 click here, part 2 click here, part 3 click here, part 4 click here, part 5 click here)

[1] Tool, “Stink Fist”, Aenima, Verse 1 and Chorus

[2] Tool, “Stink Fist”, Aenima, Verse 2 and Chorus

[3] Tool, “Stink Fist”, Aenima, Verse 3

[4] Abraham Heschel The Prophets New York, NY: JPS, 1962. 151

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