| Sermon Notes for the Season
After Pentecost: Some thoughts on
Religion and Myths:
Re-imagining the World beyond Jerusalem and Rome Once upon a time there was a world in which one super power, of immense military might, ruled most of the known world. This power saw its dominance as a sign of moral and cultural superiority, a Divine right to rule. The globalizing of its dominance was viewed as the inevitability of history unfolding as it should. This Empire ruled, it felt, with justice, even if this ‘justice’ was self-serving. There was some tolerance for religious and cultural diversity, allowing local peoples to worship as they would as long as they paid homage to the power and authority of the Imperial political and economic system. The power was divinely sanctioned, and was therefore understood as civilized as opposed to those who were barbarian and “heathen”. In the Middle East, an area of the world where many different religions and cultures seemed to meet, this Empire had put in place various governments and leaders, and supported others. They had used force in an attempt to create a passive and compliant populace, so that they could control the important trade and energy that flowed through the region. Although trouble was not uncommon, this Empire had for many years been able to secure the region. However, a growing anger amongst the populace was directed at the Empire. There were suicide attacks and constant threats from insurgent fighters. The strength of the insurgent fighters surprised the international army of the Empire, and the insurgents for periods of time were able to control parts of the territory before they were brutally massacred or crucified. It was in this historical context of Imperial dominance and insurgent warfare that Christianity arose. In the Roman-Judean conflict, which culminated with the destruction of much of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE, members of the early Christian community in Jerusalem and Palestine were torn between involvement as insurgent fighters or resisting the Roman Empire non-violently. Some fought and others did not. Some were loyal to the myth of a Judean homeland with Jerusalem at its centre, and others felt that the myth of the Word of God incarnate meant God’s justice could take another form. The myth of empire dominated in religion and politics, but the risen Christ came to teach otherwise. Myths exist, the great scholar of religion Eliade once argued, "in all that modern people call instruction, education and didactic culture" (Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries, [New York: Harper, 1962] 32.) Eliade argues that we moderns have not escaped “mythic thinking,” but have simply relocated it in categories that are not necessarily understood as “religious” or “cultic”. Myths are those large stories, narratives or underpinning assumptions in history, science, public life, and culture that go unquestioned except by those we might sometimes call prophets, cutting edge thinkers, rebels or the insane. Myths provide a way of making meaning in a world of conflict, violence and seeming chaotic events and tragedies. When a myth begins to falter, social, political and religious leaders may try to find ways to recapture the glory of earlier days. The rigidity of the modern fundamentalisms of religion, politics and culture seems to have something to do with reasserting the dominance of a mythic structure that appears to be under siege. John F. Kennedy tried to rekindle the myth of the American dream by sending a man to the moon. The current President uses mythic language of absolute good and evil in defending “God’s chosen people” who represent “western civilization and democracy” against “the dark forces of evil.” The myths of democracy and civilization are appealing. Who could question the virtues of democracy and civilization? The alternatives are surely evil and barbaric. However, the on-going barbarism of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, just as the Vietnam war in an earlier era, devastates the prestige of “western democracy and civilization” by linking it to the self interest of one nation, one ideological view and the privileges of the rich and powerful. There appears to be a disconnection between myth and practice. But then perhaps it is not the myth of democracy that has driven and is driving these various adventures, but rather a resurgence of the myth of Empire. In the lectionary readings throughout this fall, we are reading portions of Mark’s gospel. The New Testament scholars Richard Horsley (Jesus and Empire), John Dominic Crossan (The Birth of Christianity) and Jonathan L. Reed (Archaeology and the Galilean Jesus) have each reminded us that the texts of the New Testament are in fact witness to a religious movement that resisted and tried to expose the falsehood of the myth of empire. They argue that counter to the Imperial myth of military victory and then a “pax Romana” (a ‘peace’ of subservience to the powerful through violence), the good news of Christ was a reversal of the Imperial myth. Jesus, in parable, saying and deeds, de-mythologized the religion of empire (Rome and Jerusalem both being images and examples of such a mythology); he suggested that it is ‘agape and justice’ that brings peace, not violence. The rising up of Christ from his execution by Imperial force, as proclaimed and experienced in the early community, was equally a witness against the myth of Empire. Mark’s gospel was being assembled within the early church during an insurgent uprising against the Roman Imperial army in the Near East. It was a war in which Judean insurgents (various groups within First Century Judaism, likely including “followers of the Galilean Jesus”) would at times wrestle control of sections of Palestine from the Roman Legions, including for a short time Jerusalem itself. Their tactics often involved suicide attacks on the better trained and equipped Roman Legions. The reports of this war back in Rome would have portrayed the Judeans as “evil religious fanatics,” whose military tactics were barbaric, whereas the torture and terror associated with crucifying hundreds of these barbarians was widely supported as Rome’s way of keeping the “uncivilized terrorists” at bay. From Gibbon’s work "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" to present day scholarship, we are well acquainted with both the glories and the horrors of the Roman Empire. What we forget is that the early Christian community understood its “good news” as resisting, in a fundamental way, the mythology and practices of this Empire and indeed of any human Empire. Mark thus speaks for, from and within a religious community that was allied to an uprising against the Roman Imperial occupation of Palestine and Jerusalem, a group divided in how to resist Empire. The Gospel addresses a community that was deeply divided in its response: one side of the community felt a need to join the insurgents, and the other argued that resistance to Empire should take the form of non-violent actions and community life. Examining the gospel with an awareness of this aspect of its historical context, we see that the Good News of Christ crucified and mysteriously risen out of the tomb (the gospel ) does not express a myth of empire (Rome or Jerusalem), but rather de-mythologizes Imperial ambitions. However, it is not merely the Roman myth of Empire that comes under attack in Mark and elsewhere in the New Testament. Judean religious views that constructed God’s justice as a mere transfer of power from Rome to Jerusalem were equally questioned. Jesus is shown to speak of the blessing of the last and the least, the poor, the child and the servant. These are in each case direct and clear reversals of religious, social and political myths and presuppositions that secure the place of the powerful and ruling elite. Jesus was as critical of the religious elite as he was of the political elite. The German theologian Rudolp Bultman and the Swiss theologian Karl Barth contrasted myth with the gospel. Although they understood well Jesus’ attack upon the mythology of his time, they often saw his work as merely de-mythologizing. However, as Eliade reminds us, human beings live through their myths. Jesus was de-mythologizing the myth of empire—showing it to be a false and violent myth—as well as offering another myth upon which to live. Jesus did not ignore myths, rather he called attention to their meaning. The modern age has not taken the power of myths away, rather it has adopted more subtle myths. After all, the Greek word “mythos” (((( μυθοσ) from which our modern word myth is derived refers to the large stories that orient all cultural, political and social forms. We, like those in Jesus' day, have a great difficulty both in seeing the myths we live by, and being critical of them. We take them for granted as merely “the truth” about reality. Myths, however, are not simply equivalent to the ways of the world. They are the human way of understanding the world, relating to and constructing human communities in the world. Although our myths may be so out of touch with reality that they damage us and the world, they can also be ways of creating and sustaining human community and well being. How Jesus reversed the myth of Empire was by introducing another myth, the βασιλεία του θεόυ (Basileia tou Theou), the “empire,” “kingdom,” “reign” or “way” of God. This was a “way, truth and light,” expressed in parables and sayings of reversal, acts of including the excluded (healing, eating and speaking with the outcast), and of confronting the powerful and religious elite. Jesus and the early community witnessed to a myth that told of a reality of Divine justice and peace, a myth not centred in military power, religious authority or political force, but present in the lives and realities of the ordinary and the common, the “Last and the Least.” The myth Jesus offers in the reign of God is one that re-imagines the world beyond the rule of Jerusalem or Rome. The Spirituality of the “βασιλεια του θεός” is a spirituality that looks to find the presence of God in the heart of ordinary human experience. In many of the sermons I have given recently, I have made mention of the dimension of the gospel that reverses the “empire” myth. I have sometimes over-emphasized the social and political dimensions of this myth and spiritual path. The political and social dimensions of Jesus’ spiritual vision are undeniable. However, they are rooted in a spiritual perception that reality and a healthy human life are constructed not upon the Imperial power or authority of religious elites, but upon the lived experience of human beings in community. In a sense, the spiritual path of Jesus is a journey that has no centre other than the centre of the human heart, and the heart of every human community. This spiritual path begins as a disruption and de-mythologizing of popular myths of empire and authority. However, at the root of this is the dis-embedding of one myth, the myth of empire, and the claim that the myth of God’s presence in the “low and common” expresses the truth about reality. Myth should not be seen as equivalent to “fiction” or “falsehood”. Again, myths are the deepest stories, images and understandings we have about reality. Myths can be “false’ or “true”. The journey away from Rome and Jerusalem is into the truth found in the human heart, to a Christ encountered on the way, as we befriend the stranger, the outcast and the enemy in the community of Christ and in the whole of God’s creation. |