Tag Archives: Lent

The Death of Jesus in Context

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As we move through the story of Jesus’s death and on to resurrection, we return to the primary themes of this Lenten blog series on “Creation, Cross, and the Powers.”

This story is often told as if it all took place removed from the context of both creation and the powers. It is treated not as a story that we can relate to in terms of what is going on in the world today, but as a required dogma to keep us from being consigned to hell.  Jesus’s suffering and death is portrayed as if it was simply a transaction between God and humanity, a payment that God made to save sinners from eternal damnation. These transactional views turn Jesus into a passive and compliant victim and ignore his human agency and choice. His teachings and actions don’t enter this equation because what counts is his death.  They focus on death, not resurrection—not on his vindication by God despite the powers, or on his risen and ongoing presence among us.

But in the Gospels, this story is not told in the abstract, but in the context of both creation and the powers. Notice that creation is the context of both Jesus’s prayer and arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane and of his resurrection encounter with Mary in the garden on Easter morning.  And the story of his final confrontation with the authorities leading up to his arrest, trial, and crucifixion is one of the most political stories in the Bible (along with the Exodus story).

In these last days of Holy Week, we are invited to immerse ourselves in this story and to recognize with mind and heart what Jesus and his followers experienced during this final confrontation with the governing authorities of occupied Jerusalem. After his “triumphal entry into Jerusalem,” they went directly to the Temple. Jesus’s action of overturning the tables of the moneychangers there directly threatened the economic status quo (tribute and taxes to Rome/temple taxes to keep the system going). According to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), that was the last straw.

When Jesus and his followers “occupied” the Temple, the elite religious leaders couldn’t arrest him because “they feared the people” (Luke 20:19, 22:2). They couldn’t disperse the people who had gathered to hear Jesus because “the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching” (Mark 11:18). “People power” at work.

For this reason, the religious authorities had to arrest Jesus by stealth in the Garden of Gethsemane. Their problem was that the Jewish nation was under the jurisdiction of Rome—including the religious leaders, Jesus, and his followers. Only a representative of Rome could sentence Jesus to death.  That’s where Pilate came in.  Things moved on from there.

If this story is told out of context, it doesn’t make sense unless you consent to a particular dogma. But if you read it with an open mind, you can see that the words of Paul are true: “None of the rulers of this age understood [the wisdom that comes from God]. If they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.” (1 Corinthians 2:6-8). God triumphs through Jesus despite the powers, bringing light out of darkness and light out of death.

(For a fuller portrayal of the story of the events that led to Jesus’s death, see this excerpt from Chapter 5, “Jesus and the Powers,” from The Cross in the Midst of Creation.

This is the eighth post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” The other posts are as folows: 

  1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 
  2. Extraordinary Temptations
  3. The Spirituality of an Epoch
  4. Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance
  5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism
  6. Don’t Look Up
  7. Care Enough to Weep
  8. The Death of Jesus in Context
  9. Resurrection and New Creation

 

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. See also a previous Lenten series: A Lenten Call to Resist. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books. 

Care Enough to Weep

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Last weekend I was on a silent retreat, sharing prayer spaces and meals with a few church friends and a larger group of Buddhists.  On Saturday I walked the Stations of the Cross at the retreat center, knowing that the next day was Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. Sometimes when I walk that path, one or another of the statues portraying the events of Jesus’s last hours overwhelms me. This time it was the first statue, the one that portrays Pilate sitting in judgement, with a child pouring water from a pitcher over Pilate’s hands as he washes them, and into the bowl beneath. It struck me that this really was the decisive moment, the official decision that set the crucifixion into motion, with all the other participants (executioner, soldiers, and the like) carrying out their assigned roles–just doing their jobs.

Grief washed over me, along with the realization that this dynamic is at the root of the harm being done to creation today, as individuals relinquish their responsibility in the face of powers that seem out of human control. Looking at that stature brought home to me how Pilate’s action of washing his hands of Jesus’s fate is exactly the cause of the extremity of the global situation we face today. I wept.

Of course, the stage for Jesus’s trial and execution had been set long before. Jesus’s passion for the reign of God and his teachings and actions to bring it about had threatened the uneasy collaboration between the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman army that occupied Jerusalem.

I will return to the story of Jesus’ trial and execution in a later post in this series. For now, let’s consider the story of Palm Sunday. Surely Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey’s colt and the people calling on him to save them and hailing him as king further antagonized the religious authorities. They saw him as a political threat to the established order of the violently enforced Pax Romana, the so-called “Roman Peace.” When the Pharisees demanded that Jesus order his followers to stop, he replied, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out” (Luke 19:40).

The way Luke tells the story, as they came near to Jerusalem and saw it, he wept over it. Jesus wept! He could see what was coming. He said, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave one stone upon another because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God” (Luke 19:41-44).

Jesus weeps because he can foresee the terrible things will befall the people of Jerusalem and their descendants. This destruction is not God’s will, but is the result of people not recognizing God’s presence among them or “the things that make for peace.”

Jesus weeps. As we look at creation’s dilemma today, which is also our dilemma since we are part of creation, we also have reason to weep. According to climate scientists, (in many ways the today’s prophets), we can see that the terrifying consequences of industrialized civilization are already upon us and are coming at ever greater degrees of magnitude for future generations. Who are our “enemies”? According to Ephesians 6:12, “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”  In other words, against the powers and principalities.

Like the Pax Romana, Pax Americana will not bring us “the things that make for peace,” for it is also ultimately enforced through violence, including racial, gender, and economic violence. Today’s corporate-dominated global capitalist system is also enforced by multiple modes of violence. It is incapable of protecting us from the certain ecological consequences of our current way of life, which are essentially locked in by our interlocking network  of global institutions, unless we discern “the things that make for peace” and perceive where God is at work in our world. Only then will we be able to discern what steps we might take to avert disaster.

What can we do? When William Stringfellow was asked this question, he said, “If you want to do something, the most practical thing I can tell you is: weep.  First of all, care enough to weep.”[i]

Like Jesus, we can weep.

This is the seventh post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” The other posts are as follows: 

  1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 
  2. Extraordinary Temptations
  3. The Spirituality of an Epoch
  4. Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance
  5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism
  6. Don’t Look Up
  7. Care Enough to Weep
  8. The Death of Jesus in Context
  9. Resurrection and New Creation

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. See also a previous Lenten series: A Lenten Call to Resist. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books. 

 

 

[i] William Stringfellow: Essential Writings, Bill Wylie-Kellerman, editor (Fortress Press, 2013)),  page 180.

Don’t Look Up

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“You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive. For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are hard of hearing, and they have shut their eyes; so that they might not look with their eyes, and listen with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn—and I would heal them.”                                     Matthew 13 14-15

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released its Synthesis Report of its sixth assessment (AR6)[i] It should have been at the top of the news everywhere, but it was not. The constant barrage of attention-grabbing news headlines with violent, distressing, or random content makes it almost impossible to grasp what’s most important. It makes it hard to “see the forest for the trees.” But if the forest is dying there will be no trees, as is happening here in the Zombie forests[ii] of California, due of course, to climate change.

In the movie “Don’t Look Up,” filmmaker Adam McKay uses the metaphor of a world-destroying comet to parody how policy-makers and the media downplay the imminent threat of climate catastrophe. Jennifer Lawrence plays a doctoral student who discovers a massive comet headed straight for Earth, and Leo Di Caprio plays the scientist who confirms her discovery. Together they do everything they can to awaken people to the threat. The response of the US president, played brilliantly by Meryl Streep, is to “sit tight and assess,” and finally to support a billionaire entrepreneur’s high-tech (market based) money-making scheme. They go directly to the press but the talk show host, played by Cate Blanchett, ignores the danger, trivializes the topic, and dismisses the Jennifer Lawrence character for desperately sounding the alarm.

Film maker Adam McKay describes his motivation for producing “Don’t Look Up” by pointing back through geological time to the asteroid that many scientists say is responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs and many other species.  He says, “[Climate change] is the biggest story in human history, and arguably the biggest threat since the Chicxulub comet 66 million years ago.”[iii]

Is this an exaggeration? Climate scientists today are sounding the alarm.  According to the IPCC’s AR6 report:

“Human-caused climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and related losses and damages to nature and people. Vulnerable communities that have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected.”[iv]

“In this decade, accelerated action to adapt to climate change is essential to close the gap between existing adaptation and what is needed…Emissions should be decreasing by now and will need to be cut by almost half by 2030, if warming is to be limited to 1.5°C. [v]

According the IPCC’s press release, “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all…The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.”[vi]

Last November, in his opening plenary remarks at COP 27 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterrez summed up our situation: “The clock is ticking. We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible.” He added, ‘We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”[vii]

Many of us in the global North are privileged enough to be able to find ways to insulate ourselves (temporarily) from the reality and impacts of climate change on our lives and hope that the fires and floods don’t come for us. We might tell ourselves that there’s nothing that we can do, or we might feel we are doing our part because we recycle or don’t fly or are vegan or have an electric car, or we might hold out hope for the next technological fix or the next billionaire entrepreneur to save us.  But these responses are inadequate in light of the existential threat we face. These are all forms of denial, because they enable us to pretend that life will continue go on as is has before. They are ways of saying, “Don’t look up.”

In many parts of the world, people don’t have that luxury, because extreme weather is destroying their homes, their crops, their livelihoods, and even their very existence as a people (as with island nations).  Our young know that climate change is upon us and accelerating, and that they and their descendants will disproportionately bear its escalating burdens long after those who have presided over the current fossil-fuel intensive global system are gone.

Clearly, powers very much like the dominating powers of Jesus’s age, continue their death-dealing work today. Creation itself is being crucified. As William Stringfellow said, “The work of the powers in the Fall is the undoing of creation.” This becomes ever-harder to ignore as temperatures rise, weather extremes multiply, and ecosystems that sustain life are progressively unraveled, putting an ever-greater strain on our corporate-dominated capitalist global empire, leading to rising epidemics of poverty, violence, and misery.

This post is an invitation and a challenge to readers to come out of denial and face the extremity of our situation. The season of Lent is a fitting time for this, for it is God in Christ, immanent as well as transcendent, who suffers in and through us and all creation. We are approaching Holy Week, and we know that Easter is coming. Yet we cannot bypass the cross to get to resurrection.

As we walk with Jesus through the painful events that led to his death, in retrospect we can see, like the Gospel writers, God’s divine presence and providence in these events. But it’s important to look at these events in context, for it was not God but the rulers of his age who “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8). In other words, it was the dominating powers of his day—the Roman Empire and the elite religious establishment that collaborated with the Roman occupation of Jerusalem who found Jesus to be subverting the existing establishment.  For that, he was killed.

In An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land, William Stringfellow speaks of the moral impoverishment  that afflicts us as we relinquish our human responsiblility to the powers. He says, “I mean by `moral impoverishment’ what the Bible often cites as hardness of the heart” or as the impairment or loss of moral discernment; the incapacity to hear, though one has ears; or to see, though one has eyes… I refer, thus, not so much to an evil mind as to a paralyzed onscience; not so much to either personal or corporate immorality as to a social pathology possessing persons and institutions; not so much to malevolence, however incarnate, as to the literla demoralization of human life in society.” It is not so much that there are evil people running things, but that things are running on automatic according to the institutional imperatives in a global system that is working against life. “Don’t look up,” encouraged by the dominating powers that benefit from the current system, is a way to avoid facing the truth or feeling the need to respond.

As people of faith and followers of Jesus, how do we collaborate with the rulers of this age, that is, the interlocking network of institutional powers that makes up today’s global empire? How can we withdraw our support?

First, we must open our eyes and look up—to see what the scientists are showing us. We must open our ears and hear the cries of people suffering on the front lines of climate change. We must open our hearts to understand, process, and grieve what is at stake:  the integrity and continuation of the interdependent community of life that has evolved here on Earth, life as we have known it, the creation that God calls “good.”

Second, we must recognize that the damage being done to creation is not the result of natural evolution or human history. Rather, it is the result of policies developed by wealthy and powerful individuals and the dominant institutions of our time, supported by those of us who tolerate and accept this system. We can break out of this complicity by naming, unmasking (exposing), and engaging these powers and by pointing in a new and life-sustaining way of being in the world.

Third, even as we reflect on and grieve the painful realities of our time, Christ’s risen Spirit is alive and active in our world today on behalf of life, and as we experience and recognize that activity we are invited to participate. The global movement for climate justice is one such expression of the Spirit’s power.  Bill McKibben said, “The best way to counter organized money is with organized people.” People who have the courage to look up.

This is the sixth post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” The other posts are as follows:

  1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 
  2. Extraordinary Temptations
  3. The Spirituality of an Epoch
  4. Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance
  5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism
  6. Don’t Look Up
  7. Care Enough to Weep
  8. The Death of Jesus in Context
  9. Resurrection and New Creation

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. See also a previous Lenten series: A Lenten Call to Resist. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books. 

 [i] “AR6 Synthesis Report, Climate Change, 2023,” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

[ii] “Mapping California’s ‘Zombie’ Forests,” Elena Shao, New York Times, March 6, 2023,

[iii] “Climate Scientist and Netflix ‘Don’t Look Up’ director talk comet metaphors and global warming,” Elizabeth Howell, Space.com, May 11, 2022,  https://www.space.com/dont-look-up-climate-change-comet-metaphore-scientist-praise

[iv]  “Synthesis Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report,” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, March 20, 2023,

The Spirituality of an Epoch

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Whether one is oppressed or privileged, structures and spirits like white supremacy, patriarchy, domination are within us, embedded invisibly in our psyches. Name them and pray them out.    Bill Wylie- Kellermann, in Principalities in Particular

My previous post, Extraordinary Temptations, was about the temptations Jesus experienced in the wilderness. Who (or what) was this “devil” that tempted Jesus? And what relevance does this story have for us today? Consider today’s prevailing wisdom:

The “wisdom of this age” (1 Cor. 2:6) is based on the values of status and hierarchy, the idolatry of money, and belief in power backed by violence. These largely unconscious views are at odds with Jesus’s values; they express the opposite of his vision of the world as God created it to be. Fortunately, we do not need to fall prey to these delusions. The presuppositions that underlie this prevailing wisdom are false.

In biblical terms, such falsehoods originate with the father of lies (John 8:44) and are circulated by the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2). These terms are metaphors for the principalities and powers, similar to the “devil” who tempted Jesus. Such metaphorical language expresses aspects of peoples’ experiences about the mystery of evil.

The devil or Satan has been understood in many ways, including the following: (1) as part of God’s heavenly council, the prosecuting attorney who accused Job before God (Job 1:7– 12); (2) a personal spirit (perhaps embodied) that tempts people to take a path contrary to what their conscience or their faith tells them is good and right; (3) a malevolent adversary intent on harm “like a roaring lion . . . looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8); (4) the demonic ruler of this world (John 12:31; Luke 4:5– 6); and (5) the ruling authorities of this world, including the spiritual forces of evil that animate them: “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).

When tempting Jesus, the devil claimed that he was in control of “all the kingdoms of the world” (Luke 4:5– 6). Some have said that this was simply a lie he was telling Jesus, but other biblical passages back him up in this claim (John 12:31; 1 Cor 2:8). Walter Wink points to human responsibility by explaining this in terms of human choice and involvement with the demonic powers:

“When . . . Satan declares that he can give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, he is not lying; “for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.” God permits Satan such power but has not handed it over to him; we have delivered it, as a consequence of all the consciously or unconsciously evil choices we have individually and collectively made against the long- range good of the whole.”[1]

Wink also demythologized the term Satan by making the case that the term represents the dominant milieu of a culture at a particular time in history:

“Satan is the real interiority of a society that idolatrously pursues its own enhancement as the highest good. Satan is the spirituality of an epoch, the peculiar constellation of alienation, greed, inhumanity, oppression, and entropy that characterizes a specific period of history as a consequence of human decisions to tolerate and even further such a state of affairs.”[2]

This sinister, even demonic, spirituality is not vague or amorphous but is embodied by representative human beings and by concrete institutions and systems that dominate our world— that is, by the rulers of this age (1 Cor. 2-6) and those who have given themselves over to them.

As followers of Jesus, we are challenged to identify the “structures and spirits” of domination that are within us and to “name them and pray them out.” We are invited to join the growing number of people who share the values of inclusion, equity, and nonviolence and who are working to build a more compassionate, just, and peaceful world. Surely this is what it means in our time to follow the one who came so that we “may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).

This post includes an excerpt from Sharon’s book, The Cross in the Midst of Creation: Following Jesus, Engaging the Powers, Transforming the World (Fortress Press, 2022).

This is the third post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” The others are as follows:

    1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 
    2. Extraordinary TemptationsThe Spirituality of an Epoch
    3. The Spirituality of an Epoch
    4. Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance
    5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism
    6. Don’t Look Up
    7. Care Enough to Weep
    8. The Death of Jesus in Context
    9. Resurrection and New Creation

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. See also a previous Lenten series: A Lenten Call to Resist. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books. 

[1] . Wink, Unmasking the Powers, 24.

[2] . Wink, Naming the Powers, 25.

Extraordinary Temptations

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Matthew 4:1-11, Luke 4: 1-13, Mark 1:9-15

The suggested Bible readings for the first Sunday in Lent are always about Jesus encountering the devil in the wilderness. This is the perfect theme for this second post of my Lenten series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.”

Jesus has just been baptized. He has received an extraordinary experience of the Holy Spirit and a profound blessing and calling by God. Now Jesus has retreated into the wilderness to fast and pray. Creation is the context in which the devil appears to Jesus, who is faced with temptations. These are not just what we might consider “ordinary” temptations, but vocational temptations that force Jesus (or anyone who follows him) to deeply consider what it means to be a beloved child of God.

What is ultimately life-giving, and how will I share that with others? What does it mean to put my whole trust in God without recklessly taking God for granted? Is my loyalty to God strong enough to withstand the allurements offered by “all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor” (Matthew 4:8)? According to Luke, the devil put this last temptation to Jesus very aggressively. After showing him “all the kingdoms of the world in a moment in time,” he said, “To you I will give their glory and all this authority: for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please” (Luke 4:6).

After Jesus met these challenges with scripture, he began his public ministry. His initial struggle with the devil in the wilderness informed his future choices and set the stage for his crucifixion. The way he lived out his calling, fully committed to the reign of God, is what got him into trouble with the governing authorities of his day.

As followers of Jesus, these very questions, these temptations, also confront us. Creation is a good context for soul searching for us, too. It is harder now for us to find wilderness or to take off for forty days at a stretch. But perhaps we can carve out some time to at least step outside, to take a walk, to visit a park, to look up through a window at the moon and stars, or even to  enter imaginatively into creation in prayer. This enables us to get grounded in who we are as created beings. For yes, we are beloved children of God, but we are also part of God’s (beloved) interconnected community of life.  According to Mark, Jesus was not just alone in the wilderness, but “with the wild beasts.”

Those of us who live privileged lives in this technological society, many of us alienated from creation, are beset by “ordinary” temptations daily. Choices seem endless, but with the vast array of “tempting” choices, a sense of freedom can be elusive. Instead, many of us feel trapped. The larger vocations questions also confront us: Who are we as children of God (and children of the earth)? Where do we put our loyalty and trust, in the benefits offered to us by cultural accommodation to the institutional powers that dominate the world today (the kingdoms of the world and their splendor), or in God?  These questions are worth reflecting on during this season of Lent.

For other blog posts by Sharon on the story of Jesus in the Wilderness, see Jesus, Temptation, and Worldly Power and Resisting Cultural Possession.

This is the second post in a Lenten Series, “Creation, Cross, and The Powers.” The other posts in the series are as follows: 

1. Creation, Cross, and The Powers. 

2. Extraordinary Temptations

3. The Spirituality of an Epoch  

4.  Creation: Moving from Awe to Lament to Resistance

5. Banking on Our Future as Demythologized Exorcism

6. Don’t Look Up

7. Care Enough to Weep

8. The Death of Jesus in Context

9. Resurrection and New Creation

Follow Sharon’s blog post by signing up at the “Follow” link to the right. Share with the Social Media buttons below. Read other blog posts related to climate change here. Check out Sharon’s books.  Contact Sharon to request a complimentary digital chapter of one of her books, to request a presentation, or to order discounted bulk copies of her books.