Losing Life to Save it!

I love James Cone, and here he is at his usual uncompromising best. He asks 2 questions of the black church that could be asked of any church: What is the mission of the church - to save souls or bodies? And, is the church called to save its own life or called to lose its life for the sake of others?



Its amazing how easily a church can find itself sustaining itself. We're trying to find a church at the moment. We visit a church and we know that they have lots of jobs for you to fill and we suspect that when they see us in the pew, they see someone to fill their vacancies. it makes us wonder who they are for - is the church for the people or the people for the church?

I'm absolutely certain there is something outwardly unimpressive ('failed') about a church that decides not to use its energies to prop itself up. There is only a limited amount of energy and time out there and a church that chooses to use that to serve others or just let people rest is going to look unprofessional, limited, 'failed'. But herein lies its real success that, like Jesus, it chooses the path of unimpressive success. For me, its not the ultimate vindication of Jesus in the resurrection that makes Jesus' work a success - success is to build nothing in his lifetime, except to be prophetic in his unpolitical, uncompromising defence of the weak.

The cross is enough?

I went for a run with Schof on Saturday and he took me on a wild goose chase around the peak district (i.e. got me lost and sent me on a one and an hour run). "It's just over the next hill", he said about 5 times! Anyway, I'm not bitter, just can't stand up!

Anyway, a run with Schof, though painful in some ways, is a delight in others. We were chatting about repentence in the Christian circles we had been in. I recalled a prayer meeting where everyone decided to pray long prayers of confession to God. Of course, I'm all up for a bit of confession, but I came out of this prayer meeting saying, "What was that?!"

People were praying about sins that clearly haunted them, but wouldn't say what they were. I found it such a pity that they felt so guilty that they couldn't say what they were and that they couldn't just be honest about their failings. I had my suspicion about what they felt guilty about, and I suspect it wasn't murder or rape!

I just wish Christianity could be for them a place where they do not need to pretend to be 'good people', but can be honest about the fact that they are failed people. The 'being a Christian makes you good' myth just makes people feel they need to pretend they are good and feel utterly ashamed that they are not. I just wish people could be happy with themselves. Schof's comment was that evangelicals are suprisingly not very good at repentence, particularly for people who believe that the cross finally and completly dealt with their sins!

I am personally enjoying my newly acquired contentment with my sin! I have included the picture above, because I've always loved this image of the warm embrace of the Prodigal Son - wrapped in his father's arms, he is forgiven.

The Cross & the Lynching Tree

Well, your editor-in-chief has been back to the cutting room floor to edit another video! Unfortunately, I need to give the same caveat to this film I gave to my last - there are some grim scenes/themes in it! I'm going to get a reputation if I'm not careful!

I wanted to get away from the some of the abstract ways in which the cross is understood and wanted to express the idea of the cross as it really was - a violent lynching. How do you do that without making people think about violence? But I have tried hard to limit the number violent images and certainly avoided at all costs the kind of gratuitous violence of the Mel Gibson variety - a morbid fascination with violence does not interest me, but an interest in understanding the cross for what it really is, is important to me.

I would like to have used Billie Holliday's version of 'Strange Fruit' because there is nothing quite like the haunting brilliance of her performance, sung by someone who knew first hand what lynching was all about. Unfortunately her style just wouldn't allow me to dub over it. You can see her performance here.

I have dubbed over an interview with James Cone. The full interview is worth listening to. You can see it here.

I am still very much aware of the limitations of my film making skills, so please forgive this.




James Cone has said, “The crucifixion of Jesus was a 1st century lynching and it was very violent. Jesus was lynched. Well, America has a tradition of lynching. America lynched more than 5,000 black people in this land. lf we understand the cross correctly we will see it as Jesus being a victim of lynching, a victim of violence… At the heart of the Christian faith is God taking upon God’s self the suffering of the victim. So, Christians in this society want to understand what the cross was all about they have to see it through the lynching experience… When you see a lynched black body that’s who God is. God is present in that body just like God was present in Jesus’ cross. So the cross is very violent in which God is taking the violence of sin and the world upon God’s self… We have to become identified with lynched black victims. If we can’t do that we can’t be identified with the crucifixion of Jesus…The cross is God taking the side of the victim…If the powerful in our society… want to become Christians they have to give up that power and become identified with the powerless,"

Abolish the cross!

Read something today that I quite liked. A chap called C.S. Song (no idea who he is) said that the task of Christian mission is "to work towords the abolition of the cross", understanding the cross as "the height of human cruelty and the depth of God's suffering with humanity." Another guy, building on this said, "The reverence for the cross in the church appears unrelated, or even counter, to the struggle to end the suffering of the oppressed...The anthropology of the cross sets out God's concrete solidarity with victims, and a sharp critique of the collective mechanisms of violence turned against them."

I like that. I think it was Moltman (a concentration camp victim) who famously talked about the crucified God - the cross as God sharing solidarity with the victim. Girard's stuff also shows how through this solidarity the mechanisms of scapegoating are unmasked. I like the idea that in this way the cross works to end all such similar atrocities - darfur, guantanamo, bosnia, zimbabwe. It makes me think about the stuff Jesus said about "do this in rememberance of me" functioning a bit like Holocaust Day - remembering so nothing like this would ever happen again.