"The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests. It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality. Today Christians stand at the head of our country. We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit. We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press -- in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during the past years."

Which politician said this?

American Christianity is in crisis. The divisions between right and left have become more and more pronounced and have now entered the arena of political discourse. Pastors are expelling those who do not follow party lines; denominations are disenfranchising congregations that do not hold to previously cherished traditions. The fracturing will continue unabated as rivalries intensify and suitable scapegoats no longer function as outlets for anger, aggression and hostility.

We should not be surprised at any of this. Mimetic crises are the result of the conflict created not only by our non-conscious desires but also by the effects of the gospel on the breakdown of the victimage mechanism that grounds human culture.

Our text today is also about the crisis that is provoked when we stand before Jesus eschatologically. Now this text is often used to justify how others will not fare so well, and Christian preachers have frequently used this text to excoriate ‘false Christians’, that is, those who do not look, talk and act like them. This is a failed reading of the text. A proper reading of the text will invoke self-examination, not the examination of others.

When we recall that 7:1-6 encourages this self examination and that Jesus’ judgment sayings are grounded not in God’s judgment upon us but upon our own self judgments, it seems clear that in 7:21-23 we are called to ask about ourselves whether or not we in fact have falsely identified with Jesus. The basis for our self-judgment is whether or not ‘we are doers of Jesus’ teachings’, that is, whether or not we have understood and followed him as he is revealed in the Sermon on the Mount.

The crisis of American Christianity can be seen most clearly in that the ‘ethic’ proposed in the Sermon on the Mount is perceived by most to be either an ideal or an interim ethic; it is lofty but not practical. Well, it worked for Jesus and so it will work for those who are willing to hear and apply what he has said. So when we read in commentaries that ‘this otherworldly ethic’ must be compromised we can be certain that the commentator has not understood the crisis that Jesus’ life of love and forgiveness provokes in a culture of madness and violence.

The Sermon on the Mount is not a possibility among possibilities, nor is it to be construed as a high value to be sought. Rather, the Sermon on the Mount is the pre-eminent text that calls us out of our cultural formation into another kind of life, another kind of living and relating, and it is only possible when we do so in faith and trust that the Abba who cares for the creation (6:25-34) is also the Abba to whom we pray (6:9-14).

This is why Jesus says that there will be those who confess themselves to be Christians but there is very little about their way of existence that is specifically ‘Christian.’ There are those who have always seen Jesus to be a divine being, a revealer, yet that revelation is little more than what occurs in other religious myths. We can see this in our own contemporary situation where ‘Christian’ groups have aligned themselves to cultural systems, values and norms that have the pretense and wrapping of Christian words, but lack the substance thereof. These folks may be righteous and holy but it is a righteousness and holiness that is measured on the cultural scale of good and evil, it is not the righteousness of the Father who freely and unconditionally makes sun to shine and rain to fall on both evil and good and who forgives all freely.

The metaphor of the shifting sands and the strong weather are apt descriptions of the breakdown of Christianity at the beginning of the twenty first century. The violent God and the violent divine anti-Christ of pseudo-Christianity have come into conflict with the power of the God who is Love and the Prince of Peace. Violent Christian beliefs, values and rationality have come apart at the seams and the center no longer holds.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has observed that professing Christians in his time had taken the name of Jesus but exhibited nothing of his life. Neither confession nor good deeds will avail us in the eschaton, “the only thing left is his word: I have known you” (Discipleship). The ‘hijacking of Christianity’ by the so-called religious right is no different than the hijacking of Christianity by the bourgeois of Bonhoeffer’s time. Indeed, this stolen Christianity is not new, it has been occurring since Constantine, indeed as far back as the apostolic age, and continues today. Do you recall the quote at the top of the reading? Can you guess which politician said it?

Answer:
Adolf Hitler; from The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1,
Michael Hakeem, Ph.D. (London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pp. 871-872.

No significant issues occupy us today.

We'll add the so what section soon...