What We Preach These Days

Before communion at church last Sunday, the priest urged people to prepare more seriously and not to come to communion if they're unprepared— "So let's work on this"— communion may harm us if we're not worthy— and "its the preparation that makes us worthy." This "affects our whole life and our eternal life..."

Hmmm... well i'm not sure that reading some prayers and fasting a bit "makes us worthy" of the divine and intemerate Communion. Still, i know what he means, and his infelicitous way of putting the matter gives me no excuse; he's right about my need to deal more carefully with what I'm doing when i approach the Chalice. But— "affects our eternal life"? I suspect that's not quite the right issue.

To be sure, St Paul does say about "eating and drinking unworthily", "this is why many of you are weak and sickly, and many have fallen asleep [i.e., died]" (1 Co 11.27-30). But is his point really that— if i'm not properly "prepared", i might get sick and die? Or is there a more positive point which we must also remember, that to eat and drink is to join in the covenant cut in the Messiah's own flesh and blood, and to enter, here and now, into the God's reign (βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ)— into 'Godspace' as we might say, here and now? When Ananias and Sapphira dropped dead (Acts 5), was it just because they lied to a holy man, or because they had done something critically, fundamentally opposed to the power of God's reign, which was breaking into the world, making clear, in and through the Church, what his judgment on human iniquity and dishonesty was, as he established a new community, a new Israel, which was, and was to be the world's salvation?

Well I'm not really expecting much about entering, much less being, the reign of Christ in this world, nothing about "as in the sky, even on the ground" (ὣς ἐν οὐρανῷ, καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς), as Jesus really prayed; not here, not this particular sunday, not this venue. Really, we're quite content with the way things are in this world. At least they're pretty tolerable, here in America anyway. So the message is that a few prayers and a little fasting will "make us worthy" of this thing that will "give us eternal life" when we die, but make us sick or condemn us if we aren't worthy. That's the point. And death and even unworthy-communion-caused illness both seem pretty far off (though threatening, to be sure)— so it comes as little surprise that people don't quite find time to make these "preparations".

I think about this a lot. What does it mean, what would it mean, to 'enter the reign of God' or the 'reign of heaven' or 'Godspace' (the place where God rules) in a place like Africa, where murder is common, vigilante justice is often swift and brutal, corruption is all-pervasive, and poverty, disease, war, and misery so pandemic? Does it mean that we need to organize a group of people to say certain prayers before they go to communion? What would a community of people whose "citizenship is in Godspace" (Ph 3.20) be like? Would they just be another group of people waiting for "heaven when we die"— and in our Orthodox case, maybe even soundly anathematizing and mocking everyone else as having the wrong basis for thinking they'll make it too?

"Our citizenship is in the skies", St Paul wrote to the Philippians (3.20), "from which we also await as savior Jesus, lord and messiah"— ἡμῶν γὰρ τὸ πολίτευμα ἐν οὐρανοῖς ὑπάρχει, ἐξ οὗ καὶ σωτῆρα ἀπεκδεχόμεθα κύριον Ἰησοῦν Χριστόν. Is he saying, "we belong to another world"? Or is he saying that right here and right now, we are subjects of a real king, Jesus, the Lord, whereas all these Caesars that everyone admires and fears are a total sham? Is he talking about going to a "better place" when we die, or is he proclaming Jesus as Lord, right in the face of Rome, America, Museveni, Mugabe, Bush, Obama, Mao, and all the rest? What would it be, then, to speak of communion, and preparation for communion, in terms of what God wants his world to be, and therefore wants his church to be, in the world?

Anyway, after church (yes, this is still a narrative about all the amazing things that happened to me last sunday) I went to the senior sunday school class. The class met at Caputo's, a deli across the street. Everybody got their sandwiches— many were already halfway done before we were finally all together and stood up and said the Lord's Prayer together (not facing in any direction, but in a circle) as grace 'before' our meal.

Well it seems completely irrelevant, doesn't it, that i even noticed the direction we were facing. After all, facing east when we pray— which St Basil reports as one of the most ancient and firm traditions of the Christian religion— has been in our time pretty much forgotten. Culturally, we're all protestants now, so why shouldn't we pray our individualistic prayers, together, facing each other, affirming our 'community'? In our disoriented state, i'm probably lucky we didn't hold hands! (which, by the way, came via neo-pentecostalism in the 70's from the occult séance origins of the Azusa Street Revival.)

But anyway— so much for the oriented community of the Church. What kind of sunday school shall we have?

Well, we sat down to finish our sandwiches and begin the lesson. Our body language was awkward, though roughly circular, some people stuck behind the teachers, no attention to 'dialogic space', and there lots of ambient noise (muzak, kitchen noise, talk). I came expecting something more conducive to vital discussion, but... well, it might not be altogether impossible, and anyway, here we are.

They're reading Fr John Mack's Ascending the Heights (SVS). Dreadful, frightening book, as far as i can tell, life-hating, narrow, rigid, oppressive, deeply protestant— and basically avoiding St John's points, in the guise of making a very good and entertaining and profound writer "palatable for moderns". Instead of teaching young adults how to chew good meat, we challenge them with more bad pablum. But apparently, Mack's efforts weren't working very well, because Emily started by offering bribes to get the kids to read the lesson during the week— Starbuck's® certificates, something... anything. Not much interest. So... ok, on to Lesson 3, Climacus on "Exile":

"Don't be attached to anything. Don't keep bad friends. But really, don't be attached to good friends either. The world is a trap. Think about your eternal salvation!"

Ah... "eternal salvation": there it is again. But sorry, that's really Mack, not Climacus.

Well i wonder what teenagers actually care about death and eternity? Oh, yes, well, maybe they do— especially as a preternatural issue like, "What happens when we die?"— but they're certainly not consciously "mortal" yet, so it can't be an issue on that level! And anyway, in my experience, what happens after death just isn't all that exciting to people who are just about to really get serious about sucking the juicy peach of life. Except as a preternatural issue. But that's not really where i might start.

Well, Bob started by saying that St John Climacus was a monk writing for monks and therefore this stuff didn't really apply to us— it's ok for us to want and to enjoy the better things in life. (Didn't I say that we're really quite content with the way things are in this world?) We just can't let those things control us. Well, we all know that already, don't we, and so the question must have popped into at least a few minds besides mine: WHAT'S THE POINT OF EVEN BOTHERING WITH THIS TEXT IF IT DOESN'T APPLY TO US, THEN??!!

Well, the kids then took turns reading one paragraph each. One might criticize the pedagogical method, but i'll leave that aside, except to note that many of these kids are honors students, and so the pedagogy might be another indication of the whole nexus of issues i'm trying to surface. But anyway, when they get to the part about not keeping friends who can drag you down, Bob and Emily harrangue them for about 10 nonstop minutes each, about how they need to keep away from their friends whose values are opposed to theirs. After a few minutes it dawns on me what the harrangue is about: "Oh yeah. Drugs.... Do these kids do drugs?? Really??"

I look around and think they very likely don't. The kids politely check out.

Emily then jumps in with a long and somewhat nervous narrative (I think she knows she's losing them) about how she used to work in an office with a boss, a Mormon bishop, who drank heavily on the job and actually was an atheist. He took it upon himself to challenge her faith all the time with "scientific facts" and "bible contradictions". She spoke as if the guy was making sense to her but she just didn't know enough to respond, so she just kept insisting to him that she "just believed", and to us that she "remained strong" and "kept her faith". So we "just have to keep believing" and not listen when people challenge us. But she was so relieved to see him go, because he really wore her down and it's like that with bad friends. So you have to "remain strong" and "just believe" and avoid people who might really challenge your faith.

Bob said, When people challenge your faith, don't just trust your own ideas! Get the answers! Talk to someone who knows what the answers are. Talk to the priest. The answers are out there! I got the impression that you could get a specific, individual A to any Q you might ask. But it seemed kind of mysterious. On what basis might you assert any of these "answers"? Because an expert says so? Do we "believe" stuff because some kind of sanctified authority tells us?

It takes effort to break in to the harrangue for a moment— the speakers are on a roll— but I manage to do it because i am curious about the kids' actual experience of their friends etc. They open up a little. Clearly, they have ideas and are willing to talk about them if given a chance. They say one reason they hang out with friends who might use drugs (really, only pot) is that those friends tended to be people who were more alive somehow, more questioning, not just going along with society. I wanted to talk more about what being "alive" is— i mean, i really want to know what they think, because i suspect it's really interesting— but Bob breaks in with another 5-minute harrangue about choosing your friends wisely and not letting them drag you into drugs. "Bad friends can pull you down, so be careful who you choose for friends... show me your friends and I can show you who you are... so be sure to pick the 'right people' for your friends— people who have good values. Don't give in to drugs."

Meanwhile the kids finish their meatball sandwiches and start checking their watches.

As they come to the end of the chapter, i am really feeling squirmy in the noisy and unconducive venue, and as i watch the moment passing, I desperately want to say that the topic of "Exile" is deeper than it might seem from this book, or that Fr Mack might at least have missed a few points, that this is really worth giving some attention to. So i break in again and mention that Exile is perhaps THE Big Topic of the Bible as a whole— Adam is exiled from Eden, Israel from the Land, and all of us from true Life, and that's what the Bible addresses. But i let it go because the kids aren't making eye contact and just want to get out of there.

Another brief harrangue from the teachers about choosing your friends and it's over. Without prayer or singing, of course.

John Climacus's chapter, by the way, deals not with bad friends who drag you down, so much as with finding a wise man to whom you can disclose your way, and friends who will support and compete with you in virtue. This is mentioned in a final quote at the tail end of Mack's unit, but it was passed over by the class, who by that point were already "done". I tried to point to that paragraph, but got no response, so i dropped it.

Afterwards, one kid (Paul) thanked me for coming. Well that was nice, though I felt he was just doing a bit of political schmoozing, since mostly i'd just sat there and listened. But hey, he's handed me an opportunity to connect, and i want to take it!

Tell me, I said, what did you think of today's class?

He said it was boring and didn't make sense and really, they were tired of being lectured.

I said, Yah, and i'm really sad for you guys. What do you think. Are you going to be Orthodox in 5 years?

He said firmly, Yes.

I said, But why on earth? You just said they're not even making sense!

He responded instantly, firmly, without blinking: Culture.

I was actually a bit surprised. He really seems to have thought about it and come up with that answer as his best and only.

"But really? Is it really making any sense?" I asked.

"No not really. That's why I'm questioning even that", he said, motioning towards the church. "They're not saying anything there either."

Ah, the ability to see both sides of an issue!

I insisted that my friend Jeni and her daughter Katina, who was in the class, come to coffee with me afterwards. Jeni also is a sunday school teacher. I asked them how it's going. They say it's always the same here. The other priest was telling them in their bible study the other day that they owed a DEBT to Jesus who had PAID THE PRICE for them. Jeni just saw this as an attempt to control people through guilt— and you get a nice pat on the back if you're good. Katina thought it was weird how this chapter on Exile suddenly turned into this whole lecture on drugs. Drugs (pot) are common enough in school, but these kids aren't making "those choices", and lecturing them about it wouldn't do them any good if they were. I said, Well, I tried to talk about Exile a bit, but you kids were pretty checked out by that point. Katina said, "No but what you were saying was kind of interesting, actually."

Jeni told me that there actually are a couple of kids who seem to have connected with Orthodoxy and even love to debate mormons. That's a local sport here in Salt Lake, and a kind of indicator that you've begun thinking about things on your own. The mormons actually provide a great service in that respect, because they're so obnoxious and dominant that intellectual and spiritual independence, or even just teenage rebellion, can often take the form of real engagement with Orthodox Christianity here in Salt Lake.

But there's a lot of work to do, leading kids to the resources, giving them the floorplan. Jeni has been working with her 7th graders, trying to connect stories in the Bible with what we do in church, etc— to show that it's all interrelated. I plead for learning to tell the whole story of the Bible, but of course i am never sure how much even she really understands my point because nobody, just nobody in the church is teaching the Bible as the story of Israel per se, or how Israel is important in God's scheme of salvation. "Salvation" means going to heaven when you die, and the Bible is a bundle of divergent, unrelated stories that God gave us to allegorize as universal moral tales that will help us to be good persons who will, in fact, go to heaven. When we die. As i've said before, Israel is buried and forgotten— along with what the New Testament is talking about, which is the impact of the Messiah, now!

Well, actually Jeni is doing a great job. It's just that, in general the teachers all need support and more training, and many of them a lot more than she does. So I suggest to her that what we really need throughout the church are good teacher training courses. Of course I'm talking air because i'm going away, but if enough people say it, i figure it might eventually happen, so i go around saying it anyway. We really need to develop a better program. I even mention that, although i'm going away, i could offer some kind of a seminar while i'm here, like the 'Whole Bible in One Day Workshop' i organized in my parish last summer. She said she thought it would really be great, but that it wouldn't be received by the other teachers. "They're comfortable with the approach they're taking, and they're not really interested in doing anything too taxing." Well, as i said, we're really quite content with the way things are in this world, and in the church.

Even if, demographically, we're losing our kids.

So I then offer to Katina to get together with her and her friends for coffee sometime, if they want— an opportunity to talk and explore absolutely any question they have. Katina shows interest, but they're all very busy with studies..... So many opportunities have already passed....

After we split up, I get to my email and find that some guy named Ioan from Romania had seen my youtube videos (go to youtube and search for "johnbburnett") and had written enthusiastically:

I have here some interesting movies with miracles you can present to your people... showing the difference between Orthodox Christianity and other religions:

1. The most important moment in Bible is Jesus' resurrection proving him to be God and having power over death. Apostle Peter coming to the Holy Sepulcher found a Light there. Over the Holy Sepulcher, ... on Orthodox Easter ... Holy Light comes from the sky...

2. When Jesus was baptised Jordan river moved backward to show that nature listens to God. Every year on Orthodox date of Jesus' baptism..., Jordan river moves backward....

3. On Orthodox Date of Transfiguration a cloud comes to Mount Tabor.

4. Angels are present when priests give Food for Eternal life to people in Orthodox Church, look in following movie...

5. Orthodox Priests with Holy Spirit received at ordination, through prayer transform normal water in Holy Water changing molecular movement of molecules from Brownian to other movement and Water resists for years.

6. Saints' bodies stream myrrh.

7. Prophets, miracle workers, people walking on water, levitation, seeing anywhere in Earth, apparitions after death and much much more!

8. At my grandpa's death ceremony food started to grow by itself.

9. Holy Trinity, Jesus, Holy Mother of God is speaking today with many people in Orthodox World

10. Saint Spyridon's incorrupt body dissapears from its place every year, helping people and returning with shoes worn out and every year people put a new pair a shoes on him.

All of this undoubtedly shows clearly what the difference between us and them is, and proves that Orthodoxy is the true religion, and that we can have Eternal Life when we die if we just become Orthodox.

Well, i know i'm going to get into trouble for saying it, but i really have concluded by the time i get to the end of this that we are pagans!

No surprise. Not much gospel being imparted, as we see in the previous story, and paganism is probably the natural condition of the human race, especially when the gospel is not preached. And— sorry to disappoint with radical views— since neither the Old Testament nor the New ever goes into myrrh-gushing relics, the Holy Fire, levitation, visions, or shoeless incorrupt saints. Not that these things don't happen— they do!— but these are not the point of the New Testament or of the Old! So, insofar as these are the things we think of as "the difference between Orthodox Christianity and other religions", then that far are we not preaching the news that's in the scriptures, not preaching what the apostles preached! A lot of people don't seem to understand that.

But it's a lot easier to present miracles and spectacles than what the apostles were talking about. To grasp at this point what they were saying, we'd need to grasp the their first-century context. They were excited because Jesus fulfilled the messianic expectation of the Old Testament, taught the whole way of God, got crucified for doing so— and was vindicated and shown to be the first-fruits of the God's everlasting reign, now beginning to happen, as in the sky— even on the ground!

RB Hays, a scholar I like, points out that "the Christian tradition early on lost its vital connection with the Jewish interpretive matrix in which Paul had lived and moved; consequently, later Christian interpreters missed some of Paul's basic concerns. For example, the Christian fixation on christological proof texts may have caused readerst to zero in on texts like Isa 53 and to overlook Paul's concern for explaining the mission to the Gentilies and the fate of Israel in relation to Scripture."* That 'fixation' was not wrong; it fact it was even necessary, given the questions swirling around in Greek culture— but person and nature, ousia and hypostasis, even the virgin birth simply were not the issues that held the apostles' concern, or which they urged on their hearers in the late 00's of the first millennium. And since most people don't really get all those (necessary) trinitarian metaphysics... popular Orthodoxy has tended to focus, not again on Paul's forgotten Jewish interpretive matrix, but rather, on miracle and spectacle.

This Orthodoxy of miracle and spectacle— of weeping icons, holy elders, holy fire, incorrupt saints, and all the rest— isfascinating and seems to offer a quicker connection with Christ than than all that biblical stuff, but in the final analysis, i think it's alienating. Even regarding the elders, i see the need (and wasn't Climacus making just that point?), but i still cherish a bit of scepticism. Someday I'll post about my experience of the Lord's Day on Mount Athos.

Miracle and spectacle, in fact, constitute our Orthodox equivalent of pentecostalism— it's all about private, personal experience, and not really very demanding or world-changing, at that. And it could get away with not being too world-shaking for a long time because the kingdom of this world was, well... already the Holy Empire, and already Orthodox Christian. So what came to count for us "little people" now tended to be private religious experience, personal ascesis and so forth. Such private experiences (even those accessed by tour bus) can be quite profound, but they are not about any 'kingdom of God' which has really begun to overtake this age, even in its institutional life. At least not in the western context in which we live (Romanides and Yannaras and others make interesting arguments about important differences in the east.) But no matter. For us, the 'reign of God' (βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ) now belongs strictly to the remote, inaccessible "eternity" of life after death, and this world remains quite comfortable, even when it's profane, condemned, untouched, brutal, and alien. It has signs, "proofs", it is "eternal mysteries beyond the grave"— but it is no longer the civilization-shattering leaven that the early church was.

Now there are all kinds of problems with what i'm saying, and i freely admit them all without pointing to any of them specifically, because this is already too long. But in Philippians 3.20, St Paul is saying, "Our citizenship (πολίτευμα) is in heaven, and from it we await the Saviour, the Lord Jesus, the Messiah". That was positively incendiary! Paul was writing to ex-legionaries who had been given land in Philippi and full Roman citizenship rights (rather as Paul himself enjoyed as a native of Tarsus). The battle of Actium in 31 AD had made everyone fully aware that the world's only 'savior' was Caesar, their direct lord. The point of having Roman citizenship and being Roman colonists did not mean that the Philippians hoped or even desired that Caesar would someday come and take them back to Rome— it meant that they could rely on the full backing of Roman law and might, and that they themselves were part of the projection of Roman law and might into the world.

Paul's point, moreover, to his Philippian converts, was that just as the emperor would come from Rome to rescue and liberate his loyal subjects when times got bad, so also, and even more, if things got hard for them now, they could be sure that Christ the Lord would manifest his almighty power— even over Caesar and Rome, if need be, and even over death. For 'savior', 'lord', and even 'messiah' (= king, cf John 18.33 etc) are precisely Caesar-titles, and Paul is saying that Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not. So, having “citizenship in heaven” does not mean that we're just passing through this world, and may expect eventually to go 'home to Jesus'— this actually would seem to be Mack's suggestion, though not exactly Climacus's— but that Jesus will come in power to judge and to rule 'on earth as in heaven'.**

This "imperial eschatology" of Paul and the rest of the New Testament seems pretty much on the other side of the mountain for my Romanian friend, for Fr Mack and, frankly, for most of the church today. At the very least, we need to start asking how our Orthodoxy of spectacles relates to the "imperial eschatology" of St Paul. We now pray facing any direction but east. We are 'oriented' no longer to the Rising Sun of Justice, to the Lord Who Comes in Glory to judge and to rule, but to our 'community', and to the sacred object, the special experience, the holy man who has seen those "eternal mysteries beyond the grave" and is here to tell us about it.

What is worse, we now teach, protestant-wise, that we owe a DEBT to Jesus who had PAID THE PRICE for our SINSSS!!!— in other words, salvation has somehow become even for us heirs of the Fathers, the same old pietistic, protestant "penal substitutionary atonement" theory that's driving people away in many western churches, complete with the standard non-biblical eschatology about 'going to heaven when we die'. So now we say certain prayers and fast for a couple of days, and make ourselves worthy for the "food for eternal life" (another sacred object attended by angels as you can see in the movie). And if you question or doubt all this, or its relevance, you can get answers and reassurances from our Experts!

Meanwhile, I received another email from Africa, from a girl i recently said i would support, if i could, next year (but absolutely no guarantee at this point): "may the living God continue giving you an abundant life... it's as if u have taken me to the next step of my properity".....

Κύριε, ἐλέησον!

**RB Hays, The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel's Scripture, p 43.

** I'm indebted to NT Wright, "Paul’s Gospel and Caesar’s Empire", in RA Horsley, ed., Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation. Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl: Trinity Press International, Harrisburg, Pa.: 2000; pp. 160–83.) See ntwrightpage.com for this article and more.