So What?
Today’s text was made popular in the twentieth century through the work
of the American evangelist Billy Graham. We grew up hearing that God loved
us and had a wonderful plan for our life. We also learned that we screwed
up and God needed to punish us and that Jesus stepped in and took our beating.
We were told if we believed in Jesus, God would be merciful to us and not
slam us with some kind of nasty eschatological sentence. All others would
go to hell.
Now, this whole thing starts off right
but ends up rather quickly in the dustbin of religion. To interpret this text
in an exclusionist manner is to misread the text and to remain in darkness.
One can only interpret this text in an exclusionist fashion if one is first
committed to some kind of retributive justice in God. Therefore, it is incumbent
upon us as heralds of the good news of Jesus Christ, to make sure that we
do not read our scriptures from the perspective of myth, which excludes, and
to make sure that we take our cue from the text itself and read ‘from
below,’ from the perspective of the victimized, from the horizon of
the cross. Only when we do this will we find that we can be inclusive in our
soteriology.
Second, the self-giving, selfless sacrifice
of Jesus is highlighted. When, in our atonement theories, we make the cross
an event between Jesus and God (Jesus suffers God’s wrath or some such),
we sacralize Jesus and begin the process of Christian mythologization. On
the other hand, if we begin with Jesus self-giving as a fundamental Christological
and soteriological axiom, then his forgiveness of us for killing him as he
hung dying is the true word of the gospel.
Political, social and economic systems
in the Christian West have long been tied to atonement theories although this
correlation wasn’t realized until the late twentieth century. As Preachers,
we do ourselves and the gospel, not to mention our congregations, little good,
if we persist in announcing a christified version of all the other gods of
religion. During this Lent, we are given opportunity to repent of our mimetic
ways of thinking. As Bernard Ramm used to tell his students, “God forgives
our theology just like he forgives our sin.”
2006:
I watch a lot of football and I’ve always wondered, “does anyone
actually go get a Bible and read John 3:16 after a touchdown?” And if
they did would they hear judgment or grace? (I’m usually too busy celebrating
or crying.)
I wonder how long the church will not see that if it is going to preach a
loving God, it must be loving; if it is going to proclaim that God forgives,
it had best forgive, if it is going to teach that God loved us, while we were
yet enemies, it must love all enemies. I paraphrase Nietzsche: “If you
want me to believe in your Redeemer, you had better look a little more redeemed.”
Are we not signposts, pointing to Jesus, just as He is the signpost who points
to the Father?
I, for one, am not going to surrender the beauty and power of this text to
those who think they have a lock in their sacrificial rendering of it.
Anthropological Reading
If Nietzsche were here today, he would
find the modern day ‘cult of the victim’ to be abhorrent. If that
‘cult of the victim’ had any Christian underpinnings, we are sure
he would ruthlessly dismantle them. There is a fine line between the modern
cult of the victim and Girard’s mimetic scapegoating hypothesis, a fine
line which in reality is a chasm. The contemporary obsession with the victim
would not have been possible without the gospel revelation. Unfortunately,
that is as close as the current “victim” and the Gospel come,
because modern victims, like Abel and unlike Jesus, demand redress. And if
they are dead and cannot speak for themselves, their kith and kin demand justice.
Jesus’ blood speaks a better word
than that of Abel.
The gospel is not about a gentle Jesus
meek and mild who submitted to authority, as a slave to a master, but it is
a story about one who was so in tune with the Creator that he could do…
virtually anything. The choice not to invoke resentment but to be actively
forgiving (which takes great inner strength) while being tortured to death
is what shatters the mirror of myth that had long shrouded the process of
victimizing.
The Fourth Gospel, as much as Paul or
the Synoptics, is firmly anchored in a theology of the cross. No matter where
we turn in our early Christian literature, there is nothing being said if
the cross is left out. The so-called Gospel (sic) of Thomas and the alleged
document Q which, of course, have no passion narrative cannot be said to be
representative of the faith of the early Christians. There is no gospel in
an ethical Jesus, or a wise and sagacious Jesus, or a revolutionary Jesus,
or a Gnostic Jesus. That is, if by gospel one means light, revelation that
takes place, in and around the passion of Jesus as every single significant
writer in the New Testament reminds us.
While this is not the place to deal with
atonement theories, we must mention that our text also poses a challenge to
those who have used this text sacrificially. Some have thought that Christian
atonement is unique when it is really just a mirror of all other religious
thought. We refer here to the commonly accepted ‘penal satisfaction
theory of the atonement.’ Some preach this text and describe God’s
giving of his son as a giving over to wrath. This is a false reading. This
atonement theory is foundational to fundamentalism and must be deconstructed
if we are to have hope of being balanced.
The text for today lays a claim upon
us: to acknowledge that the purpose of God is revealed not in judgment but
in love. To fail to acknowledge the character of this love, displayed in the
life of Jesus, is to be in the darkness. It is to fail to see that any judgment
that is passed is the verdict we pass on ourselves and even from that verdict,
we shall be delivered.
Resources: see Anthony Bartlett, Cross
Purposes, and J. Denny Weaver The Non-Violent Atonement , as well as the article
by Robin Collins “Girard and Atonement: An Incarnational Theory of Mimetic
Participation” in Willard Swartley, ed., Violence Renounced.
Historical/Cultural
The text today from the Fourth Gospel
offers many exceptional entry points for a mimetic reading. We observe the
following:
1. The Son of Man saying
2. The comparison to Moses
3. The Johannine ‘Words with Two Horizons’
First, the Son of Man has not been mentioned in the Fourth Gospel since the
end of chapter 1 where the angels of God would ascend and descend upon the
Son of Man. Here the Son of Man must be ‘lifted up’, that is exalted
in the same way that Moses ‘raised/exalted’ the serpent on the
staff. Implicitly, we are dealing with the same theme as last week’s
lesson and next week’s lesson, namely the suffering of the Son of Man
Second, the Johannine use of the verb
‘to exalt/to lift up’ has an ironic twist to it. Exaltation and
glorification are terms used of enthronement ceremonies. But, according to
the Fourth Gospel, Jesus is exalted, not in his resurrection nor in his ‘ascension’
but precisely in his greatest humiliation, death on a Roman cross, raised
a few feet off the ground. The use of the verb ‘to exalt’ is one
of many in the Johannine Gospel that requires a mental shifting of gears,
sort of like a hermeneutical Mobius strip. These words with double ‘horizons’
provide a vehicle for the author to take you to the ‘other side’
when interpreting his text (Paul D. Duke, Irony in the Fourth Gospel)
If we read the entire chapter 3 we will
have already encountered a few of these. In 3:3 anothen can mean either ‘again’
when temporal or ‘above’ if spatial. In 3:8 pneuma can connote
breath, wind and spirit. In 3.14 and 8:28, as well as in next week’s
gospel reading, the verb hupsao can mean both ‘exalt’ and is thus
comparable in meaning to doxazo (to glorify), as well as ‘to lift up’
as on a standard.
T.F. Glasson (Moses in the Fourth Gospel)
observes that there is another possible word play in our text. In the Septuagint
of Numbers 21:8, “the word used for the standard or pole on which the
brazen serpent was placed is semeion; this word or some cognate is regularly
used for standard in the Greek Old Testament, and as we know quite definitely
it also means sign or miracle and is so used in John.” Further, “it
is rather remarkable that the Hebrew word nes means both standard and sign
(or miracle), and the Greek word semeion has the same double connotation,
it also means both standard, or something lifted up, and sign or miracle.”
The ultimate semeion is the Cross of Jesus; all other signs are but witnesses
to this.
Either this page has not yet been completed, or we have not found any significant textual issues in the lectionary texts for this Sunday.
Introductory Articles
We will add articles as we are able,
or as users of the site request them, so if you have suggestions for additional
pieces, please write to us!
"Introduction
to Mimetic Theory"
"Mimesis"
"The
Scapegoat"
"The
Pillars of Culture"
"Jesus"
"The
Four Gospels"
A Brief Introduction
to Luke
What's New: (Hover your mouse over to pause cycling)
Nm 21:4-9
Ps 107:1-3,17-22
Eph 2:1-10
Jn 3:14-21
(Numbers 21:4-9)
From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land
of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against
God and against Moses, "Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die
in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable
food." Then the LORD sent poisonous serpents among the people,and they
bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and
said, "We have sinned by speaking against the LORD and against you; pray
to the LORD to take away the serpents from us." So Moses prayed for the
people. And the LORD said to Moses, "Make a poisonous serpent, and set
it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live."
So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a
serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.
(Ephesians 2:1-10)
You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following
the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the
spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once
lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh
and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else. But
God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even
when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ--by
grace you have been saved-- and raised us up with him and seated us with him
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might
show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your
own doing; it is the gift of God-- not the result of works, so that no one
may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
(John 3:14-21)
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. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but
those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed
in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light
has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because
their deeds were evil.For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to
the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is
true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have
been done in God."
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
Is the Apocalypse Inevitable?: Native American Prophecy and the Mimetic Theory presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008
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
Rene Girard and the Recovery of Early Christian Perspectives (Brethren Life and Thought)
The Dynamics of Violence and the Imitation of Christ in Maximus Confessor (St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly)
"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
"Jesus and the Gibeonites: Reading the Bible from the Perspective of the Hidden Victim" by James Warren.
Mark Heim's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement
Kate Layzer's "No More of This" - A hymn on Nonviolent Atonement (and inspiration for Mark Heim's hymn!)
Alan Cork, "Transformation" in L'Arche: A Mimetic Account presented to the Colloquium on Violence and Religion 2008
"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
