So What?
What will you preach this weekend? Will
you preach that your hearers are saved by their beliefs? Or that we have to
chose light, and not darkness?
Or will you preach the Gospel? That the
kosmos, in all of its light and darkness, its flesh and spirit, are precious
to God? As God redeemed the Cross by being “lifted up” God also
redeemed our flesh by becoming flesh, redeemed our evil purposes by bringing
them into the light, not by destroying them.
It could be tempting here to go some
Eastern/New Age route, Yin and Yang as necessary parts of a whole. Not a road
we’d suggest. What Jesus promises here is not that we need evil and
good to make up a whole world, or that evil is not evil but just some part
of reality that we “don’t understand.” No. God intends to
redeem the flesh, redeem our evil.
The good news is that our broken flesh
will be made whole. Our twisted desire, which leads us frustration and violence,
will be set right, set on its proper object. We will not have our mimetic
desire taken away from us (our flesh) but we will imitate another desire,
the desire that Jesus had for the Father.
Anthropological Reading
Desire will be redeemed. Even mimesis
will be redeemed. Even Satan will be redeemed (shades of Origen or Irenaus?).
Kosmos is a term the FG uses
to connote the reality structured by the violent Logos. And it is said that
God loves all of the kosmos, that of which we are and have become. We are
loved in spite of our broken perceptions. It is in and through this brokenness
that God reveals God’s self, on a Roman cross outside the holy city
of Jerusalem. We humans create the Monster, the mechanism of violence and
God redefines the meaning of the center, the victim, the scapegoat. Lies are
revealed and the truth is known. This love, the agape of the Abba knows no
limits or boundaries, it encompasses all and everything. This God loves her
creation more than herself. This God demonstrates the extent of that love
in giving up his only child to us humans.
If we are to see the reign of God, we
most be born again (or from above, whichever way you choose to translate anothen
). If we are to enter into the reign of God, we will enter in both as flesh
and spirit.
In John’s Gospel, we see the Word
become flesh in order to save flesh. Yes, John is very clear that “it
is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is useless,” (6:63) because
the flesh, intractably bent by mimesis cannot lead itself out of the cycle
of violence and death, but that does not mean that the reign of God is a “spiritual”
reality that excludes the flesh. This kind of dualism, the rejection of “flesh”
for the “spirit,” so typical of the gnosticism against which John
wrote, is also at the heart of the scapegoating process, the substitution
of the victim for the mimetic double.
The dividing of the world into light
and dark is the result of the projection of our own darkness (we all have
both) onto the other. And this division of the world into one where we must
chose either light or dark, flesh or spirit, places us inevitably, intractably,
in the dark. Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night because he is in that darkness,
because he hears Jesus speak of the birth from above that re-unites spirit
and flesh. But Nicodemus, hears Jesus speak of a birth that replaces one life
with another, in other words, a substitution of one life for another.
By the time that this piece goes up on
Preaching Peace, we will all have seen the Superbowl and the ubiquitous “John
3:16” sign that will probably pop up. Unfortunately the person holding
that sign will probably be unable to quote John 3:17, where we learn that
God’s purpose is to save the world, the entire “kosmos,”
not only those who believe, to the exclusion of all others. God’s rejection
of.. no… God’s redemption of our murderous way of preventing the
war of all against all, the “scapegoat” (God enters into our scapegoating
process as scapegoat to undo it!) is what we are to believe in. Not the resurrection,
but the “lifting up” of Jesus (3:15). Jesus links this “saving”
(the movement from dark into light) to the image of the crucifixion alone.
This is why we can have no enemies, even,
or most especially those bound by the scapegoating process, by Satan. Every
exercise of the scapegoating process is a part of the process God chose to
use for our salvation. We will not be delivered fully from the cycle until
the entire kosmos is redeemed, but in the mean time, we allow our evil to
be brought into the light, we don’t insist that darkness and light be
forever separate, that flesh and spirit remain forever at war in us. Perhaps,
as we cease to do violence to ourselves, we will also find it less satisfying
to do violence to others.
Historical Critical
Note the sheer number of Johannine ‘double-words’
in this brief discourse.
Nuktos (night)
Semeia (signs)
Anothen (again/above)
Pneuma (spirit/wind/breath)
Hupsao (exalt/lift up)
The hermeneutic of the Johannine ‘double-words’
is meant to help us read the text on two levels. The distinction between these
levels has been drawn in largely temporal sequence, there was the world of
Jesus and then there was the world of the Johannine community. J.L. Martyn’s
great thesis suggests this, and rightly so. But we must not lose sight of
the fact that for the Johannine community, these double words are indicators
of a greater dialectic, the kosmos structured a la the violent Logos
of a Heraclitus, and the revelation of God within that kosmos with
a Logos of his own. Where scholars find dualism in the Johannine literature
we find the dialectic of the redemption of all things (panta 1.3).
Either
this page has not yet been completed, or we have not found any significant textual
issues in the lectionary texts for this Sunday.
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Book Reviews!
Genesis 12:1-4a
The Lord said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your
father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great
nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be
a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I
will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him;
and Lot went with him.
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the
flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about,
but not before God. For what does the scripture say? "Abraham believed
God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Now to one who works,
wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without
works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
For the promise that he would inherit
the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but
through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who
are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings
wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.
For this reason it depends on faith,
in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants,
not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith
of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, "I have
made you the father of many nations") -- in the presence of the God in
whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the
things that do not exist.
John 3:1-17
There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus
by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who
has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the
presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no
one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus
said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one
enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?" Jesus answered,
"Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without
being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what
is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you,
'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear
the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." Nicodemus said to
him, "How can these things be?" Jesus answered him, "Are you
a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
"Very truly, I tell you, we speak
of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our
testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe,
how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended
into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And
just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of
Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
"For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish
but may have eternal life.
"Indeed, God did not send the Son
into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be
saved through him."
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright
1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches
of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights
reserved.
Occasional Articles
As with the Introductory Articles, we
will add other articles as time permits or as our readers request. If you
have a suggestion for anything, please let us know.
Michael Hardin
Michael's Essay for a Celebration Volume honoring Rene Girard
Michael's Response to Willard Swartley's Covenent of Peace at the November Colloquium and Violence Meeting
Does
Peace Make A Difference? - Michael's essay in response to Rick
Warren's P.E.A.C.E. plan (which somehow never mentions peace).
An Analysis of Rick Warren - Michael's response to "The Purpose Driven Life."
"The
God of Pat Robertson" - a response to Pat Robertson's words
to the people of Dover, PA.
"A
response to Charles Stanley's "A Nation at War"
"Must
God be violent? A Diagnosis and Prescription for Modern Christianity"
The
Scapegoat: Christologies in Conflict - A Study in Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Biblical
Testaments as a Marriage of Convenience: Rene Girard and Biblical Interpretation
Finding
Our Way Home: A Brief Note On The Authority and Interpretation of Scripture
"Does
The Passion of the Christ Preach the Gospel?"
A
sermon for the holiday devoted to Dr. Martin Luther King. (requires
Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
GRASPING
GOD: Philippians 2: 1-11 in the Light of Mimetic Theory
Essay on Brethren Life & Thought
Essay on Mimesis and Dominion
"EcoSpirituality"
Or What Happens When You Sit Down With A French Literary Critic
Jeff Krantz
Mighty
One or Crucified Messiah? Competing Christologies and the Chiastic
Structure of Mark's Gospel
There's
No Such Thing as the Rapture - A sermon preached at the Church
of the Advent, Westbury (requires Acrobat Reader)
Holy
Scripture and the Consecration of Gene Robinson - a response
to the request of the Windsor Report for a Scriptural rationale. (requires
Adobe's Acrobat Reader)
Worship - The Redemption of Desire by Jeff Krantz
Myth
and Film - a piece written for the City of Angels Film Festival
The Stations of the Cross - Rewritten by Jeff Krantz
A Dramatic Presentation of the Stations of the Cross for Youth by Barb Fabijan-Waddell
Escaping
the Power of "My" - A NonViolent Approach to Stewardship
Preaching
Peace in Hollywood: The Theologies of Terminator, Lord of the Rings, and the
Matrix
V
for Vendetta - The Name Says It All A review of the movie.
Essays, Sermons and Liturgical Pieces by Friends of Preaching Peace
"The Wisdom of God's Peace" a sermon by Jim Amstutz, co-pastor of Michael's church.
Girard's Christology - Per Bjornar Grande
Violence, Anarchy and Scripture: Jacques Ellul and Rene Girard - Matthew Patillo
Comparing
Plato's Understanding of Mimesis to Girard's - Per Bjorner Grande
C. Frank Terhune, an Easter Sermon: "God's Big But" (no kidding!)
Gerald Biesecker-Mast's paper from Theologia Pacis on Pacifist Gospel Epstimology.
An essay by the Rev. John Hill on Mimetic Theory and Catechesis
