Micah 6:1-8

Resources

1. James G. Williams, The Bible, Violence & the Sacred, has a section on Micah on pp. 152-154. For example:

Much like Amos and Isaiah, Micah cries out against those who force the old free peasantry off the land and acquire enormous land holdings (Mic 2:1-4). A key passage in Micah, often quoted, is 6:6-8. It is often considered an addition to the Micah scroll stemming from the sort of post-exilic piety that is expressed also in Psalm 51. A case may be made for this position. In fact, it would support the non-sacrificial reading of the Scriptures as evidence of part of a post-exilic, anti-sacrificial perspective that stems in great part from the prophetic tradition. Let us pick up the passage halfway through:

Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my life?
He has disclosed to you, O mortal (adam) what is good;
and what does the LORD seek from you
but to do justice, and love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Mic 6:7-8)

It is quite striking that in this advanced perspective on the divine-human relationship and morality there is nonetheless a recollection of the archaic connection of the offering of the firstborn and transgression. Right relationship with God and reestablishment of order does not depend on eliminating the ills of the human community by killing the firstborn son for the sake of the family or community. It depends on the ancient covenant virtues of mishpat, or justice and right judgment, and chesed, or kindness (the "steadfast love" of Hos 6:6), the kindness one does for others who belong to the same community or family.

3. René Girard, Things Hidden; note #52 on page 154 expounds on the prophetic critique of sacrifice, quoting especially Micah 6:6-8:

Criticism of the cult of sacrifice by pre-exilic prophets is played down by the majority of commentators, whether they are religious or irreligious by persuasion, Jewish or Christian, Protestant or Catholic. People attempt to show that the prophets are only opposed to a 'cultural syncretism' which they believe to be unorthodox and that their principal aim is to centralize worship at Jerusalem. But in fact the texts are too many in number and too explicit for there to be any room for doubt. See for example: Isaiah 1:11-16; Jeremiah 6:20; Hosea 5:6; 6:6; 9:11-13; Amos 5:21-25; Micah 6:7-8.

To combat sacrifices, these prophets have recourse to historical arguments. They draw a distinction between the profuse sacrifices of their own decadent times and the ideal period for the relationship between Yahweh and his people, which was that of the life in the desert when the absence of livestock made sacrifices impossible. And the deep-seated reason for their refusal comes to the surface in the link between animal sacrifice and the sacrifice of children, in Micah, for example-he perceives behind the increasing practice of sacrifice an escalation which, in the final analysis, always involves reciprocal violence and mimetic desire:

With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my first-born for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has showed you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6-8).

The prophet contrasts the grotesque and threatening escalation of burnt offerings with the quintessence of the law, which is love of one's neighbor.

If Ezekiel takes a sacrificial position, once again, this is because in his period sacrifices quite clearly had nothing more than a ceremonial and archaeological value. The mimetic crisis stays 'sacrificial' in the broader sense; but it is no longer sacrificial in the strict sense, it is no longer directly centered on the question of sacrificial rites properly speaking. (note #52 is found on pp. 451-452)

Reflections and Questions

1. How did the first hearers of these prophetic critiques hear their message? And, if we say that they didn't hear it, then how did these prophesies survive. Their whole religion was centered on sacrifice, yet the prophets like Micah proclaim that God really doesn't want this. I find this amazing. Are there any modern corollaries? Are there features of the way we practice religion that we think is important and God doesn't?

2. In my article on Holy Communion (Contagion, Vol. 3), I suggest that the sacrament can lapse into sacrificial practice. More recently, I've been thinking that a definition of sacrament might be that which transforms sacrifice into self-sacrifice. Jesus transformed the sacrifice of the Cross into the self-sacrifice that leads to resurrection and a life of service.

Yet as early as Corinth (1 Cor 11), Christians were practicing the ritual meal in ways that were just simply sacrificial, with people going home hungry. Paul, akin to Micah, tells them to stop; God doesn't want that. What about our practice of the sacraments? At our church, for example, we bless younger children instead of including them in the meal. I can tell by body language and the looks on their faces that some go away 'hungry,' understanding that they have been excluded. The justification we use has to do with what they can or can't understand. Isn't this a sacrificial distinction of the old order? They 'understand' being excluded. And what about understanding Christ's presence in the sacrament? I'll bet that the three year-old Zwingli would have 'understood' this better than the grown-up one did.

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Resources

1. James Alison, Raising Abel; this passage is referenced on pp. 90, 137, 181. The first and third citations have to do with how God chooses the least likely to carry out God's ministry; the second, p. 137, is a discussion of not being scandalized in the "Time of Abel," the time of our victims coming back to us, not for revenge, but to forgive. For more on being scandalized see #4 below.

2. James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong; this passage is referenced on pp. 93, 175-177, 210, 262, 278. Let me share two of them with you, first p. 93:

A further consideration about the nature of the universality of the foundation of the new Israel is brought to light by consideration of Paul's teaching on justification being made available by grace through faith. What Paul preached was the intelligence of the victim, ⁽¹⁾ or, in his words, the Messiah as crucified, the power of God and the wisdom of God. The power is the creative construction of the new humanity made possible by the victim, the wisdom is the intelligence of the victim, which, had the powers of the world possessed it, they would never have crucified Jesus (1 Cor. 1:17-25; 2:6-8). The grace in question in any discussion of justification by grace is the grace of the self-giving victim. What this grace has brought about is a new way of being human which knocks down the wall that separated Jew from gentile. That is to say, the grace which justifies does so by bringing into existence a new unity of humanity which does not justify itself over-against any other group. Any group which justifies itself over against any other group is still tributary of the mechanism of the formation of identity by victimization. The making just that comes from grace is precisely the construction of a new unity that is not based over-against any other, but receives its identity as given from the self-giving victim. That is to say, the foundation of the New Israel, a collective identity, is the making present of this justification by grace through faith. Those who through faith in the presence of the self-giving victim come to form part of and construct this new Israel are, in as far as they form part of and create this new unity, being justified by grace through faith.

Here we have the sacramental principle behind both the creative liturgical celebrations of the ecclesial hypostasis, ⁽²⁾ and the concrete living out of the praxis inaugurated by Christ. The reality of the creative, beneficent divine mimesis begins to be realized in the sign of forgiveness created in the midst of the distorted mimesis of creative futility. In practical terms this means that our being inducted (and transformed) into the ecclesial hypostasis always reaches us as the forgiveness of sins, and our process of recovery of creaturity always passes through our creating signs of the forgiveness of sins for others. This sign can never be created in the midst of the vortex of distorted desires which constitutes the apparently 'strong' social order of futility, because futility renders forgiveness an empty, pointless, sign: a sign of weakness rather than creative strength. Forgiveness can only become a creative sign among the rejects of the order of futility, those cast out by its centrifugal force. Only they are weak enough to become signs of creation, precisely because in the eyes of the world they are of no importance, on their way out of being, making no contribution.

We have, it seems to me, some insight then, into why Jesus' practice of bringing into being the ecclesial hypostasis worked preferentially among the prostitutes and the tax collectors, as well as the importance St Paul attributes to the unimportance of those called to be members of the Church in Corinth:

For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world even things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are. (1 Cor 1:26-28)

People who are of no importance in the order of the world are especially suited to becoming signs of the new creation, because they have been emptied of being by the vanity of the old creation to such an extent that they can become signs of the new creation as they forgive and let go of the old which has cast them out.

Nor, alas, does this mean that the ecclesial pastoral task is to transform such outcasts into an army of 'heavy' force that can then contest and overthrow the order of this world. To the extent that the marginalized, empty of 'being', acquire force and come back into the world, to that extent they cease to be creative signs of forgiveness bringing into being the new creation, and become another part of the dialectic of power that is the order of the world, a sign of nothing at all. They become another example of the human attempt to realize 'good' being immediately devoured by vanity, becoming part of the way in which we produce evil with the best intentions. The ecclesial pastoral task seems to be to stretch ever further towards those who are not, under constant threat of becoming part of the vain 'good' of the world by stopping to look after 'the ninety-nine sheep who never went astray'. It is only the forgiving stretching towards those who are on their way out of being that is participative in the creative creatureliness of the new creation.

All this has merely been to try to unpack what is implicit in the starting point of this thesis: which is that God could only come into the world to bring about the new creation as forgiving victim, as that which was on its way out of being through expulsion. We can see then why we talk of original sin, rather than an original condition or an original state. We talk of original sin because the only way that God can realize creation in our midst and involving us is as forgiveness. It is the creative forgiveness, which is the bringing into being of the ecclesial hypostasis through the self-giving victim on his way out of the world, that defines the state of the apparently 'strong' world, in fact passing away, as one marked by original sin.

3. Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, references this passage on p. 235 as a lead-in to developing the theme of ch. 13, "Where are the Philosophers Now?"

4. Behind "stumbling block to the Jews" is the Greek word skandalon, a word which Girard argues as a key word in the New Testament. Link to (1) an exposition of Girardian reflections on skandalon, and (2) a complete listing of its occurrences in the New Testament.

5. René Girard gives this passage literally the last word in I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, p.193. He ends with this passage because he raises the following question on p. 189: "What is the power that triumphs over mimetic violence?" To which his immediate response is "The Gospels respond that it is the Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit." Girard especially gains insight from John the Evangelist's other name for the Spirit, "Paraclete," and so I offer this excerpt of pages 189-193 in its entirety in my webpage on the Girardian insights into Paraclete.

The final subsection within this closing portion gives Girard's own assessment of the importance of an evangelical anthropology to theology, as a key to unlocking the impasses experienced in contemporary theology. Let me repeat that excerpt here:

My research is only indirectly theological, moving as it does across the field of a Gospel anthropology unfortunately neglected by theologians. To increase its effectiveness, I have pursued it as long as possible without postulating the reality of the Christian God. No appeal to the supernatural should break the thread of the anthropological analyses.

By offering a natural, rational interpretation of facts formerly perceived as relevant to the supernatural, such as Satan or the apocalyptic dimension of the New Testament, the mimetic reading truly enlarges the field of anthropology. But contrary to non-Christian anthropologies it does not minimize the hold evil has on humans and their need for redemption. Certain Christian readers fear that this enlargement encroaches on the legitimate domain of theology. I believe the opposite is true. By desacralizing certain themes, by showing that Satan exists first of all as a figure created by structures of mimetic violence, we think with the Gospels and not against them.

This enlargement of anthropology occurs, we must observe, at the expense of subjects that current theologians, even the most orthodox, have a tendency to neglect, as they can no longer integrate them into their work. They do not want to reproduce, purely and simply, ancient readings that don't desacralize violence sufficiently. Neither do they want to suppress the basic texts under an imperative of "demythologizing" that is positivist and naive, in the manner of Bultmann. So they remain silent. The mimetic interpretation opens a way out of this impasse.

Far from minimizing Christian transcendence, attributing purely earthly, rational meanings to themes such as Satan or apocalyptic danger renders Paul's "paradoxes" of the Cross more relevant than ever. I think that through our engagement with some of the most astonishing texts of Paul we have already found enlightenment for the true demythicizing of our world, and we will find enlightenment even more in the future, as Gil Bailie foresees. ⁽³⁾ This enlightenment can only come from the Cross.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but for those who are being saved, for us, it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart." Where is the sage? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since the world, in the wisdom of God, did not recognize God by means of wisdom, it has pleased God to save those who believe by the folly of preaching. For the Jews demand signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to the Jews and folly for the Gentiles, but for those who are called, Jews as well as Greeks, it is Christ who is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Cor. 1:18-25, emphasis mine)

Matthew 5:1-12

Resources

1. K. C. Hanson, "How Honorable! How Shameful! A Cultural Analysis of Matthew's Makarisms and Reproaches." Begin with what might be a more accurate translation. Hanson makes a good case for translating makarioi as "How honorable," and does so within a context of the honor-shame value system that was so significant in ancient cultures. Hanson concludes: "I would argue that if makarisms are fundamentally expressions of honor, then Matt 5:3-10 must be interpreted as programmatic value statements: the conditions and behaviors which the community regards as honorable." This makes more sense to me than trying to mark out poverty and mourning and the like as being blessed. Honor is more clearly a valuation as determined by certain individuals or communities.

Another aspect of Hanson's paper of interest to mimetic theorists is that he conjoins his reading of makarisms in Matthew 5:3-12 with his reproaches in Matthew 23 -- among them the crucial verse for mimetic theory: "Therefore I send you prophets, sages, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town, so that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar" (Matthew 23:34-35) -- "all the righteous blood on earth" pointing to the universal anthropology hypothesized by Girard's naming of the "victimage mechanism."

2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 4), pp. 100-110. Hanson's translation then makes even more sense within Bonhoeffer's frame of reference on the beatitudes, which is basically as "programmatic value statements." Bonhoeffer reads the Beatitudes as spoken specifically to the disciples who have already dropped everything to follow Jesus, with the crowd as potential disciples should they accept the valuation that Jesus places on following him. He writes:

Therefore, "Blessed!" Jesus is speaking to the disciples (cf. Luke 6:20ff.). He is speaking to those who are already under the power of his call. That call has made them poor, tempted, and hungry. He calls them blessed, not because of their want or renunciation. Neither want nor renunciation are in themselves any reason to be called blessed. The only adequate reason is the call and the promise, for whose sake those following him live in want and renunciation. (p.101)

There are great nuggets thoughout his exposition. For the second beatitude, he assumes the disciples as among the rejected and as constituting part of their sadness. But then follows this amazing passage:

Why must Jesus' community of faith stay closed out from so many celebrations of the people among whom they live? Does the community of faith perhaps no longer understand its fellow human beings? Has it perhaps succumbed to hating and despising the people? No one understands people better than Jesus' community. No one loves people more than Jesus' disciples -- that is why they stand apart, why they mourn. It is meaningful and lovely the at Luther translates the Greek word for what is blessed with "to bear suffering." The important part is the bearing. The community of disciples does not shake off suffering, as if they had nothing to do with it. Instead, they bear it. In doing so, they give witness to their connection with the people around them. At the same time, this indicates that they do not arbitrarily seek suffering, that they do not withdraw into willful contempt for the world. Instead, they bear what is laid upon them, and what happens to them in discipleship for the sake of Jesus. (p. 104)

3. The bearing of suffering also recalls the verse in Matthew that I consider central (11:12): "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force." Suffering violence, bearing suffering. The first thing with which Jesus honors his disciples (combining Hanson's translation and Bonhoeffer's emphasis on discipleship) is: "theirs is the kingdom of heaven." See the Girardian Reflections for Advent 3A. (Notice, too, that the other significant verse in that passage could now be translated, according to Hanson, "How honored are those who are not scandalized at me.") You might also consult a complete list of Matthew's phrase "the kingdom of heaven."

Based on these first three reflections, and guided by the following (especially the next one from Knowing Jesus), I'm pondering (in 2005) a reading of the Beatitudes more wholly consistent with mimetic theory before preaching them.

4. James Alison, Knowing Jesus; pp. 42-45 are on the Sermon on the Mount. Link to an excerpt of Alison's comments on the Sermon on the Mount.

5. James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong, p. 81:

After the resurrection, then, Jesus' moral teaching and his teaching concerning discipleship were able to be understood not as extra features of his life, unrelated to his Passion, but structured by exactly the same intelligence of the victim that led to his Passion. Exactly the same is true of Jesus' understanding of the coming of the kingdom of God which he preached, which was also the foundation of the new Israel in his victimary death, which he prepared. So, for instance, the sermon on the mount paints a picture of blessedness as being related to the choosing of a life that is not part of the violence and power of the world, going so far as to show solidarity with those who are of no account in this world, even if this means suffering victimization because of the option taken. The parallel passage to the beatitudes, the parable of the sheep and goats, shows the same intelligence at work: divine judgement is recast entirely in terms of practical human relationship to victims, independent of formal creeds or group belongings. The only relationship that matters in the judgement is that with the victim.

6. René Girard, Things Hidden, pp. 196ff., provide commentary on the Sermon on the Mount which places the Beatitudes in context. Link to a full excerpt of Girard's reflections on "The Preaching of the Kingdom," pp. 196-202.

7. Raymund Schwager, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation, cites Luke's version of the beatitudes:

Jesus declared those blessed who are normally judged quite differently by humankind and considered unfortunate and battered creatures: "Blessed you poor, for to you belongs the kingdom of God. Blessed those who hunger now, for they will be satisfied. Blessed those who cry now, for they will laugh" (Luke 6:20ff.). Blessed are those unfortunate up until now, because the kingdom of God belongs to them and in it everything will be transformed. But this turnabout, as the beatitudes make clear, will happen only in the future. Besides the words and images that speak of the already present kingdom of God, there are countless others which point to the future. But how are the present and the future of the kingdom of God related to one another? (pp. 32-33)

8. Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled, sums up the point of his book in the epilogue:

Perhaps the anthropological role of the Christian Church in human history might be oversimplified as follows: To undermine the structures of sacred violence by making it impossible to forget how Jesus died, and to show the world how to live without such structures by making it impossible forget how Jesus lived. In both life and death, Jesus was opposed by the most respected institutions of his world. Not surprisingly, therefore, the prospects of institutionalizing either the Sermon on the Mount or the revelation of the Cross are not great. "The Church," wrote Karl Barth, "sets fire to a charge that blows up every sacred edifice which men ever erected or can erect in its vicinity." ⁽⁴⁾ In every instance, the institution in closest proximity to the Gospel's explosive charge is the institution we call the Church. As Andrew McKenna puts it, "the breakdown of institutional Christianity is the legacy of the crucifixion narrative, which is one with the Hebrew Bible's denunciation of overtly sacrificial institutions, indeed, of all forms of victimization." ⁽⁵⁾ Fortunately, however, the breakdown of institutional Christianity is not the only legacy of the crucifixion narrative. Peter's Aramaic name should be a perpetual reminder of the lingering lure of sacrificial thinking in Christian history, but it should not obscure the fact that the name means "rock" and that, especially in a world as radically destabilized as the one in which we live, we should not casually dispense with the few forms of stability that survive. The Church, like Peter, is both a stumbling block and a cornerstone. It is the latter only when it is consciously contrite for being, and having been, the former. (pp. 274-275)

Gil Bailie gives examples in chapter 1 of Violence Unveiled of the twists in multi-culturalism and of grunge clothing styles, where the aim is to try to make yourself look poor.

The September 29, 1992, Wall Street Journal, carried an article on a related subject by Heather MacDonald. MacDonald reported on how rigorously the doctrine of multi-culturalism was being enforced on today's college campuses. Her article began this way:

It is never too soon to learn to identify yourself as a victim. Such, at least, is the philosophy of today's college freshman orientation, which has become a crash course in the strange new world of university politics. Within days of arrival on campus, "new students" (the euphemism of choice for "freshmen") learn the paramount role of gender, race, ethnicity, class and sexual orientation in determining their own and others' identity. Most important, they are provided with the most critical tool of their college career: the ability to recognize their own victimization.

Such things are so self-satirizing that journalistic satire seems wasted on them. What must not be missed, however, is that beneath all the buffoonery lies the most sweeping historical revolution in the world, namely, the emergence of an empathy for victims and a dawning realization that no event can be fully assessed until its victims have been heard from. Of course, the trivialization of this empathy for victims was virtually inevitable, and so was the attempt to exploit the victim's moral power for social, economic, and political advantage. But neither the trivialization nor the exploitation diminish in any way the historical and anthropological significance of the West's moral concern for victims.

A few years ago, another related story appeared in the fashion section of the New York Times (Sunday, November 24, 1991).The story was largely a montage of photographs apparently taken on the streets of New York of people dressed in clothes with patches sewn prominently on them. The brief story ran beneath the headline: "Patches: In, Not Down and Out." It reads:

All the patched clothes seen around town recently were not a result of the present recession, nor yet of nostalgia for the Great Depression of the 1930's, when patching clothes was a necessity. Today's patches are all about status and style.

Christian Francis Roth's clothes have intricate patch inserts that are part of Mr. Roth's designs.

Patched jeans have been around since the 1960's. The newer ones are imitating Mr. Roth's more expensive designs with appliqued patches that don't cost as much.

And not to be confused with those styles are the rap-style patches with fringed -- or frayed -- edges on denim clothes.

This style came to be called "homeless chic," a name that is no less ironic and bizarre than the fashion contest to which the story alluded, a contest between those with designer patches, those with less expensive imitations, and those desperately hoping to distinguish themselves from the others by wearing "rap-style patches" with frayed edges. This is all very funny and very expensive and more than a little pathetic. If money can't buy happiness, maybe it can buy poverty, or at least catch clumsily at the moral distinction that adheres to social marginality in a world exposed for centuries to the Sermon on the Mount.

The fact that concern for victims is so ridiculously trivialized does not mean that it is a trivial concern -- far from it. "Identification with the victim can be perverted," writes Andrew McKenna, "but this only authenticates the undisputed privilege of the victim as the site from which truth is determined in our era." ⁽⁶⁾ After the sniggers die down, the deeper issue raised by this new and widespread claim to victim status must be explored. For, as the Dutch theologian Edward Schillebeeckx argues, the historical conversation-partner of European culture is the victim. ⁽⁷⁾

The Sermon on the Mount not only blesses or beatifies the poor and the meek, the oppressed and the persecuted; it also prescribes remedies to the violence that produces them (see Alison 1994, 42-44). When Jesus urges that we turn the other cheek, that we surrender our cloak to the man who solicits our coat, it is essential that we assess the rigorous structural coherence of such hyperbole: we are being summoned to withdraw from the cycle of violent reciprocity and defensiveness that only breeds more of its kind.

The character of that kingdom, however, is surprising. The Beatitudes (5:3-12) contravene common sense by declaring that God's blessing rests upon the mourners, the meek, the peacemakers, and (especially) those who are persecuted. (Note that vv. 11-12 reiterate and expand the blessing pronounced on the persecuted in v. 10.) Thus, the Beatitudes limn an upside-down reality, or -- more precisely -- they define reality in such a way that the usual order of things is seen to be upside down in the eyes of God. The community's vocation to be "salt" and "light" for the world (5:13-16) is to be fulfilled precisely as Jesus' followers embody God's alternative reality through the character qualities marked by the Beatitudes. The community of Jesus' followers is to be "a city built on a hill," a model polis that demonstrates the counterintuitive peaceful politics of God's new order. (p. 321)

Finally, the New Testament texts depict a symbolic world in which the real struggle is not against flesh and blood, in which the only weapons that the church wields are faith and the Word of God. The truth about reality is disclosed in the cross: God's power is disclosed in weakness. Thus, all who are granted to see the truth through Jesus Christ will perceive the world through the lenses of the Beatitudes and the strange narrative of the Apocalypse, in which the King of kings and Lord of lords is the slaughtered Lamb. The power of violence is the illusory power of the Beast, which is unmasked by the faithful testimony of the saints. In this symbolic world, wars and fightings are caused by divided and unholy desires within the individual (James), but those who are made whole in Christ become ambassadors of reconciliation and participate in the body of Christ, the community whose oneness signifies the ultimate reconciliation of the world to God. And the deepest truth about reality is rooted in the character of God, who loves enemies and seeks to reconcile them to himself through the death of Christ. (p. 340)

1. In 2005 I ventured into potentially dangerous waters by critiquing the American habit, since Sept. 11, 2001, of everywhere saying, singing and writing "God Bless America." Woven together with the above first two sources (Hanson and Bonhoeffer), I contrasted what we generally think about when saying "God Bless America" with the blessings spoken by Jesus in the Beatitudes. Theologically, I wanted to base things in the promise to Abraham and Sarah -- "I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed" (Genesis 12:2-3) -- a promise whose fulfillment comes through Jesus Christ and the call to discipleship. The results are a sermon titled "God Bless America . . . and All the Families of the Earth."

2. Link to an old sermon from 1993 (just several months after I began reading Girard in earnest) that uses a fable of "The Happiness Machine." The fable is a bit clunky, but it metaphorically elaborates the Girardian thesis about sacrificial mechanisms lying behind all cultural institutions.

3. I wonder, though, if the mechanistic metaphor still fits when posing God's alternative to human culture. It might constitute one of the crucial differences. Human cultures are mechanistic in their machinations of death; God's culture in Jesus Christ, offering true freedom and life, are not mechanistic -- which is a point for us to fear, being alien and unfamiliar to our usual comfort-levels within our mechanistic orders. Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor speaks of this fear in justifying his efforts to protect us once again from the real freedom that Jesus offers us.

Return to Year A Index

Return to "Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary" Home Page

Link to "The Text This Week" -- the Most Comprehensive Lectionary Site on the Internet

1. See an excerpt on "The Intelligence of the Victim" (The Joy of Being Wrong, pp. 77-83) for an explanation of how Alison uses this terminology.

2. "Ecclesial hypostasis is explained chapter 6, "Original Sin Known in Its Ecclesial Overcoming," pp. 162ff.

3. Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled (New York: Crossroad, 1995).

4. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, translated by E. C. Hoskins, (Oxford, 1933), p. 375

5. Andrew J. McKenna, Violence and Difference, (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1992), p. 110.

6. McKenna, Violence and Difference, 164.

7. Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 650.