First Thursday of Lent

God of all futures, give us the tenacity to hope, that we may not give in to fear, despair or cynicism.  In his name.  Amen

I have to thank Walter Brueggemann and Hans Kung and St. Gregory of Nyssa and his older sister St. Macrina the Younger that they have helped me to get over the terrible habit of nostalgically longing for pasts that can never come - and which were certainly not as imagined them to have been - and the present that can't endure anymore than those lost pasts can.   It is one of the features of the Jewish-Christian-Islamic tradition that creation, the universe, the Earth and the creatures who reside in them are part of an ever becoming future bent towards an end in which all of them are a part of making, an end that won't be an ending.  We don't know what that future in even our own lives will be never mind the ultimate end except that it is central to that faith that the future will prove to have been bent towards justice, that it will validate the first judgement of the Creator given in Genesis that what was created is good.  

So I've had to give up longing for pasts and even the present as it passes in front of our eyes.  I've had to give up an ultimate pessimism that comes with seeing how progress toward that ultimate end is thwarted by evil intent and ignorance, willful stupidity (which is most stupid in the most intelligent and least bad among the most humble) and all of the whole host of human failings and short comings and weaknesses.  

In the Epistle reading, Paul sets up a sharp either-or that contrasts "they" with "we."  "They" are "enemies of the cross." The cross of Jesus expresses the self-giving love that is willing to suffer for the sake of the neighbor.  The enemies of the cross are those who refuse such self-giving love and sign on with the empire of Rome that will finally execute Jesus in order to silence criticism and maintain a system of greed and exploitation giving love and the empire of greedy oppression.  

Paul imagines that we, all of us, are on one side o the other.  "They" enemies of the cross) take their "belly" (insatiable appetite) as god*, are unashamed of their boastful living, and peruse worldly possessiveness.  By contrast "we" (advocates of the cross and its performance of self-giving love) live in hope of the new governance of God.  Paul's rhetoric assumes that a decisive choice has been made by the faithful.  

[For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ.  Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.  But our commonwealth is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself.]  RSV 

Walter Brueggemann:  Gift and Task

If I had the text with me I would contrast the view of The Cross here with that given by the late James Cone in terms of Black Liberation Theology. Though it would be to expand on the meanings of both scholars not to exclude one or the other.   

Of course, the temptation has been to break in after Paul's description:

Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things, 

and ask, "Remind you of anyone?"  But while the question is legitimate the answer wouldn't be adequate even as it was accurate.  It's a description of the cardinal virtues of secular materialism and not only in its most vulgar manifestation in Trumpism.  That is only the tackier version of what is the ubiquitous system of valuation practiced in late-stage American capitalism in the period of de-Christianization, many of those who pretend to Christianity the loudest, some of the most de-Christainized, some of the less insincere guilty of not calling out the heretical anti-Christianity of their fellow Christians.   I've certainly been guilty of that cowardice but I'm trying to get past it now.  In no small part due to Brueggemann and the others I've read. I'm a recovering "liberal" of that sort and find that the liberalism of The Law, the Prophets, the Gospel and Epistles is far more radical because it is far more real. 

Note:  I took the reading from the Revised Standard Version which matches the quotes of Brueggemann.  I don't know which translation he was consulting.  I don't think it's an enormous problem for most of these readings. 

*  I've had to realize there were things I could do and things I can't do under any possible circumstances.  I cannot talk the Chinese people into give up the cruel and barbarous wild meat industry nor the entire human species to give the cruel and barbarous domestic mass raising of ducks and pigs and other animals even though those produce one pandemic after another.  If the distinguished geneticist and epidemiologist Matthew Meselson's chilling warning given during the avian flu epidemic, that it was very possible for a world-wide pandemic to kill the entire human species ever comes true, I'd bet that the origin would have been in the meat industry, possibly in China but it could start anywhere.  The terrible influenza of a hundred years ago is believed to have started in a swine herd in France at the end of WWI, as I recall.   If that happens, at least I can die knowing it wasn't my fault.  Though I suspect if I was alive to die in it, I'd be thinking of other things.  

I strongly suspect that if the human species is to survive much longer, it will have to be a vegan future. Maybe we'll have to give up war against each other as well as against animals.  The Bible doesn't explicitly permit eating meat until after The Flood, just thought I'd throw that in for fun.