“What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who describe themselves as ‘religious’ do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by ‘religious.’”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Those of us embedded in, reliant upon "religion" and its false controls of the mimetic crisis we fear do not look forward to the "end." It doesn't seem that it will be very pretty. It is the collapse of the sacred. It is the demise of the victimage mechanism. This is the end. As Rene Girard has pointed out it is ‘the war of all against all.’ It is the complete inability of the mechanism of violence to deal with the problem of mimetic rivalry and violence. It is the out of control escalation of mimetic crises that no longer find resolution. There is no longer any ritual outlet. This is the end that Jesus expects.

Take a good hard look at this text. Nowhere in Mark 13 is God behind the violence of the apocalypse. It all stems from human origins. The collapse of the sacred reveals the purely human origin of retribution. Retributive religion is the faith of the worshippers of the mimetic gods. And the structures they erect both in the physical and in the spiritual world will come crashing down around them.

The desacralization of churches, mosques and synagogues can be seen in the world wide damage that has been done to them all in wars, disputes, bombings and racist activities. No one any longer fears the wrath of the god of the other. No god appears to be on one side or the other. Every side claims God on their side but the evidence suggests otherwise. It would appear that God does not discriminate between his/her children. He makes rain to fall on the evil and the good and the sun to shine on the just and the unjust. God forgives his enemies. Not exactly the God that has been taught globally for the last two thousand years.

That God, the vanishing global God is the god of violence. And the god of violence is showing his tremendous power at the turn of the twenty first century since Jesus was here. We are finding that we despise violence in all its forms. Child abuse and spouse abuse top our lists, as do rape, robbery, assault and murder. But we are also beginning to see that war, colonization, industrialization, urbanization and bias are also forms of violence. So also is religion. So don’t be surprised that one stone shall not be left upon another. We may weep for those who have no hope beyond their gods of violence, but we do not fear for ourselves.

On the other hand, Jesus’ use of apocalyptic is quite different from that of his known contemporaries. He does not give detailed or extensive descriptions of heaven or hell. Unlike the apocalyptists, there is no theme of Jewish nationalism in Jesus. Neither is there a holy war.

Mimetic theory helps to see what Jesus is doing with apocalyptic: he is subverting its populist categories. But he does the same thing in regard to halakic debates, ‘messianic’ titles and with parables. Jesus is out to overthrow the Powers, including the powers of our linguistic mythmaking (which is what apocalyptic is) because it invariably contains a scapegoat. We might put it this way: Jewish apocalyptic has a theologically centered perspective while Jesus has an anthropologically centered apocalyptic viewpoint.

One of our major problems with the ‘quest of the historical Jesus’ has been that Jesus does not appear to be either a consistent or profound thinker. We believe he was. We hope we have been able to demonstrate that premise, this Year B, as we applied mimetic theory to the gospels and then asked what historical-critical questions it has cleared up for us.

Yes, we are moving to a religionless time, a time after the end, a time when Jesus shall indeed take his place over all space, time and history and in turn surrender himself one last time to the his abba, bringing us with him. If, in the meantime, we should desire to live now as we will live then, then we have seen that even though it is the end of our time in the gospel of Mark, it is not quite the end of the story of Jesus. He must still make his way to the Cross which awaits him. And we likewise are called to ‘carry a cross.’

The cross is the singular place where the principalities and powers have their shot at Jesus and at us. They failed with regard to Jesus. He forgave his persecutors. Since there was no curse on him, since he had done nothing to deserve such a fate, he was vindicated on the third day when He was raised from the grave, and he brings us with him. But know this: The principalities and powers do not want us to believe it is all over for them. They want us to live for them, not for God. They deceive and delude and seduce us. (Maybe the interesting premise behind the movie The Matrix captures this image well.) We become possessed (living to obtain possessions and defending our possessions [both material and non-material]).

What does Christianity without religion look like? For starters, it is a faith that is grounded in the benevolence of the Creator. It rejects the importation of negative mimesis into its theology. It respects the life affirming character of God. As we have tried to show here on preachingpeace.org, this has important consequences for the way we structure our ‘systematic theology.’ Christians will indeed tremble as their traditions are exposed as little more than Christic versions of scapegoating, many will perceive themselves in an mimetic battle of epic proportions and though they will parade themselves on the side of truth, justice and the Christian way, in fact they will be scapegoating others at an alarming rate. Thus they will prove themselves worthy disciples of the mimetic gods.

The confluence of Evangelicalism and certain sectors of the American social and political establishment is currently the most significant symptom of the disease of mimesis as it affects Christianity. A Christian culture or perhaps we should say, one that professes to be such (as some assert) would never countenance the kinds of war and retribution and retaliation that we seen from both politicians and heard from preachers in recent years. If indeed America is a ‘Christian’ culture, it should be noted that Jesus does not found cultures, he deconstructs them. This so-called ‘great Christian country’ is about to find out it is not so Christian after all because it is not like Jesus. The agent that will help precipitate this crisis is you.

The announcement that that God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ rejects retribution and retaliation is the one thing the generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism does not want you to preach. The announcement that the God of peace, reconciliation and forgiveness is revealed in Jesus is poison to the principalities and powers. You are the ones who can bear witness to this and thus begin the demystification of the powers as they infect the lives of those you shepherd. Your choice to hear the clear witness of the goodness of the gospel of Jesus and to follow Jesus as you are constantly led by his Spirit is the real hope of the church. In times in which it feels as though everything that had been rock solid is now ground quaking under our feet, those of you compelled to preach the gospel of Jesus can rise up and boldly announce the good news of the God of both Jews and non-Jews, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.

We hope that our reading of both Mark and John this Year B has proven fruitful to you. We encourage you, if you are not already doing so, to read Rene Girard’s books. We invite you to take a look at the Colloquium on Violence and Religion and its journal Contagion. (JEFF: INSERT WEB LINK) One of our fellow members of the COV&R also hosts a lectionary based Girardian website. Paul’s insights are invaluable, his illustrations are clear and his pastoral vision is acute. (Click here to go to Paul’s site, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary) Finally, remember to write to us so we can get to know you and your concerns.

It might appear that we have spent a lot of time reflecting on the negative aspects of things eschatological. That is only because there is so little christological eschatology being done out there. As a closing comment we would like to say this. Jon Anderson and Yes in the song ‘Holy Lamb’ summarize our eschatological views best: “And all we need to know is that the future is a friend of yours and mine.”

Pax Vobiscum