Paradise is Not Lost

From my reading of Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love for This World for Crucifixion and Empire by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, I am not quite ready to get the the death of Jesus yet and how focusing on it dramatically changed Christian faith. Another quote:

In the sixth century St. Apollinare Nuovo Church, at the edge of the old city (Ravenna, Italy), we found the earliest surviving life story of Jesus depicted in images. Near the ceiling on both sides of the basilica nave, thirteen rectangular mosaics marched from the chancel toward the main door. We examined each of the twenty-six panels closely. On the right wall near the chancel, an image of the last supper began the thirteen scenes of his Passion. At panel ten we encountered Simon of Cyrene carrying the cross for Jesus to Golgotha. We expected to see the Crucifixion on panel eleven. Instead, we were confronted by an angel who sat before the tomb. The apparition spoke to two women swaying forward like Gospel singers. We too leaned forward in astonishment and remembered what the angel had said: "I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here" (Matt. 28:5-6). The remaining panels showed the risen Christ visiting his followers in the stories of doubting Thomas and the road to Emmaus.

We found no crucifixion in any of Ravenna's early churches. The death of Jesus, it seemed, was not a key to meaning, not an image of devotion, not a ritual symbol of faith for the Christians who worshipped among the churches' glittering mosaics. The Christ they saw was the incarnate, risen Christ, the child of baptism, the healer of the sick, the teacher of his friends, and the one who defeated death and transfigured the world with the Spirit of life.

It seems that nowhere in early Christian art is there a focus on the death of Jesus. Not until the 10th century. This is one of these pieces of information that I find astonishing - that it is so and that I am just learning it now. Early church art focused on recreating paradise. When Christians walked into worship spaces they were reminded that with their baptisms they had re-entered paradise here and now and that their ethical living helped to make paradise a reality for themselves and others. Paradise was not lost. Their sin and the sin of the world did not so mar earthly life that they longed for the afterlife or even some kind of future eschatological moment. They were already living in a realized eschatology.

The afterlife was real of course, and full of saints. But even the saints were present in this life through icons and images. They were a part of this world's paradise made possible by the resurrection of Jesus and by those who lived resurrected lives.

One important insight to keep in mind here is that we are talking about a period in history where virtually everyone is illiterate. When we think of Christian history we tend to focus on the writings of early Christian leaders. As important as these writings are to get a sense of the emerging doctrinal decisions and the battles over who and what is orthodoxy, the vast majority of early Christians had their faith shaped by the art and liturgy of their worship spaces, which is why so much money was put into building beautiful spaces. And the predominant images found in those spaces were about living in paradise. Bread, wine, water, art, and the sharing of resources made paradise a reality.

I am also reminded of one helpful critique of liberal Christianity coming from the direction of the emergent folks. Too much of liberal Christianity is emotionally dry with its focus on word and intellect. There is more to life than being smart and right on the issues. We need to be engaged emotionally through music, poetry, and art and be reminded constantly that there is beauty in the world and that experiencing it is transformative in a way far deeper than any intellectual conversion experience. Which is not to say that engaging the mind cannot also be a thing of beauty - it is - but we want and need more. It seems the early Christians knew this.

Abundant Life Here and Now

I am currently reading Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love for This World for Crucifixion and Empire by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker. The authors begin with the observation that images of the crucified Christ don't appear in early Christian art for nearly a thousand years after the time of Jesus; then they become predominant. Why is this? What changes within Christianity bring it about?

The first Christian art from the catacombs through the building of worship spaces emphasized the restoration of paradise on earth as a result of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Images of loaves and fishes, water and wine, the rivers of life, trees and animals were used in Christian art to created the sensation of paradise restored. In the same way icons brought the heavenly paradise down to earth for those who touched and prayed to them. To become a Christian brought not only the promise of a future paradise but life in paradise now as part of a community that was attuned through spiritual disciplines to see and participate in paradise and to make it a reality through the practice of what the authors call ethical grace.

They suggest that this same spirit animates much of the New Testament. For example here is what they have to say about John 3:16:

Today this passage is invariably interpreted to mean that God placed Jesus in the world to die on the cross, but at no point does this story mention death. It does not use the Greek word paradidomai, the word that John's Gospel specifically uses to describe the action of those who "gave" or "handed over" Jesus to be crucified. John 19:16 makes it clear that Pilate, not God, "handed him over to them to be crucified." Jesus' words to Nicodemus are about birth and life, not death and afterlife. They reiterate the themes of Creation and the power to be born of God that we spoke of in Chapter 1. God loves the world, the kosmos, and loves the Son, to who he gives "the Spirit without measure" (John 3:34).

In John's Gospel Jesus incarnates wisdom, turns water into wine, feeds the multitudes, demonstrating in various ways that he has come to restore paradise, abundant life, to this life.

Unfortunately, the authors say, paradise is eventually replaced with images of the suffering and tortured Jesus. When and why that happens in a future post.

The thesis of this book reminds me of my trip to Rome several years ago. As we visited the catacombs and churches and the Vatican Art Museum to see early Christian art our guide, Grady Snyder, kept asking us "what are you not seeing here?" There were no crosses anywhere to be found. The promise of new life not a focus on Jesus' suffering and death was what attracted converts to Christianity.

It seems to me that this is or should be one of the predominant themes of progressive Christianity. I think we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

More Bad Christian Music

I hope you this makes you laugh as much as it did me.


Via Andrew Sullivan

10/12/1492

Today is a holiday in America. Columbus Day was declared a holiday to mark the date when Christopher Columbus "discovered" America. Of course we all know that this isn't politically correct, because there were Americans native to this land long before Columbus arrived in 1492, but nonetheless, we still observe it.

Today at LiberalChurch, member Paul Larson delivered a message about "Discovery". He asked us to think back to our first "discoveries" as children about our parents, family, and friends. He asked us to recall as some of our vivid childhood memories and then asked us to determine what it was we discovered about ourselves and those around us. He suggested that perhaps these discoveries are the things that keep the memories vibrant in our minds today after many years. Paul reflected on three distinct memories from his childhood and explained what he learned from each of these experiences as a child to the 50+ in attendance for worship this morning.

At the end of the service the 2009 Stewardship Campaign: Living More Simply, Living More Deeply, In God's Love, was launched with the viewing of a new video by Vicky Goplin and the distribution of the Stewardship Folders which will circulate among our households over the next 3 weeks.

Following worship, a group of 5-6 people worked outside to chip/shread dead tree material from summer storms. Vicky Goplin lead a group of over 12 adults and children in a game/song where we passed cups around and answered questions. Vicky explained to the group gathered the Bible had been written in Greek and Hebrew and that certain words used in the Bible at the time they were written have come to mean very different things today. She gave us the example of obey and honor. We talked about the well known passage where children are instructed to "honor their father and mother". To end the lesson we did an exercise where we broke into 2 groups with adults in one group and children in the other and then shared our responses with each other to see if we could discover new things about each other.

Happy October 12, 2008! Celebrate the day that we have each been given!

Bible Reading Marathon in Rome

"In the beginning" (but in Italian) read the Pope yesterday at the start of a week long Bible reading marathon from the Vatican. You can watch live the continuous stream of multifaith readers in Vatican t.v. Even if you don't understand a word that is being read, Italian sounds like music to the ears anyway. It's almost like a meditation chant.

Going Emergent

A fifty-eight year old UCC pastor in professional and spiritual transition finds himself, and his wife, worshiping in a bar with 20-somethings:

For my spouse, Susan, who was struggling with the loss of our old church, sitting on a barstool between the pool table and the dartboards raised her sense of adventure. For me, the church raised the hope that the vision of a “third way” I had been pursuing for more than a decade—blending mainline inclusiveness and passion for social justice with evangelical emphasis on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ—might be realized by a younger generation that bore fewer scars from the culture wars.

On our second visit, a former student of my spouse greeted her with shock: “Dr. McFadden! What are you doing here?” In a community of students, musicians and baristas, we clearly stood out like sore thumbs. The former student shared a bit of her story, one we have since heard many versions of: she was raised in an extremely conservative church, counts her faith in Christ central in her life, but wearied of having non-Christian friends “assume that because I love Jesus I support George Bush and hate gay people.” Much of my “third-way” vision is present in San Damiano in people like this student.

Music is central to our experience of worship. San Damiano folk are equally disdainful of traditional, organ-accompanied hymnody and evangelical praise music, which they call “Jesus goes to Vegas.” Simplicity and authenticity are hallmarks: Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” filtered through the life of a man who has experienced God’s liberation from narrow judgment, becomes a hymn.

As a mainline institutional guy, I had a lot of adjusting to do. For example, our worship service officially begins at “10:30ish,” which is emergent code for “maybe 10:40, maybe 11:05,” challenging for a former pastor who anguished if the 8:45 service began at 8:46. The sacrament is celebrated every week, but until six months ago it was a “self-serve body-and-blood buffet.” And Greg, my cherished pastor, reads scripture through a literalist hermeneutic: “The beloved disciple was a really old guy when he wrote the Book of Revelation.” San Damiano has mellowed me in many ways. Now if the service begins before 10:45, I am sometimes annoyed because I am not done chatting with my friends. I have learned that the truth of the gospel can be fully expressed within a hermeneutic different from my own. Above all, I am learning new things about Christian community, Christian friendship and Christian hospitality.

Pornography and Evangelical Worship

Hopping links this morning brought me to this post that I really liked:

There’s been a lot of speculation in recent years about why so many evangelicals are converting to Rome and to Eastern Orthodoxy. I wonder whether the highly experiential focus of contemporary worship might have something to do with it.

The New York singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega has an entertaining song entitled “Pornographer’s Dream” (from her 2007 album, Beauty and Crime). In the song, Vega asks what kind of woman a pornographer would dream about:

Would he still dream of the thigh? of the flesh upon high?
What he saw so much of?
Wouldn’t he dream of the thing that he never
Could quite get the touch of?

It’s out of his hands, over his head
Out of his reach, under this real life
Hidden in veils, covered in silk
He’s dreaming of what might be

Out of his hands, over his head
Out of his reach, under this real life
Hidden in veils,
He’s dreaming of mystery.

It’s a nice idea: the pornographer, from whom nothing is concealed, dreams only of concealment itself. Unlike the rest of us, his fantasies involve not naked flesh, but a body “hidden in veils, covered in silk.” For the pornographer, the only thing forbidden is mystery, so that his fantasises are of clothed women, veiled flesh.

As an analysis of pornography, I think this is completely correct. The real problem with pornography is not that it is too erotic, but that it is not erotic enough. In seeking to reveal everything, to fulfil every fantasy, it destroys the very possibility of fantasy and eroticism. And so the use of pornography ultimately results not in erotic ecstasy or euphoria, but in mere boredom.

Perhaps all this can serve as a parable for the contemporary preference for experiential worship styles. Where every church service becomes the opportunity for a life-changing experience of the divine presence; where every song and sermon and prayer is designed to produce immediate emotional impact; where the whole Christian life is transformed into the pursuit of a “naked” experience of the divine – here, the final outcome can only be a profound and paralysing boredom. And for those subjected to such boredom, the only remaining spiritual desire is for a mysterious God, a God not merely naked and exposed, but clothed in ritual, sacrament, tradition.

Why are so many evangelicals converting to Rome and Constantinople? Perhaps their infinitely deferred quest for a Deus nudus has finally resulted in an unbearable boredom. Perhaps they’re dreaming of a God who is not always promiscuously available to immediate experience, but is instead “hidden in veils, covered in silk” – a more modest, and therefore more sexy God.

For what it’s worth, my own opinion is that we should avoid the pitfalls both of a promiscuous experientialism and of any reaction towards ritualism for its own sake. Instead of trying by our own efforts either to strip God or to clothe him, we should look to the place where God has both veiled and unveiled himself for us: in the event of Jesus Christ.

I can't speak to the experience of what it is like to be part of a salvation show every week, but I can say that one of the challenges of experiencing simple, non-liturgical worship week after week is finding (and offering) a sense of mystery and awe. I understand the pull of the Cathedral and the Eastern rites.