Join the new world

This article is a response to the article by Phoenix Quinn

Monkey On My Back

Before we do the readings today, I wanted to give the reader an example of something that is stirring. This, my friends, is stirring:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNojQd_ri_o

“Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.” As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Jesus answere😛 “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. “
- Matthew 24:1-13

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. “
- Matthew 5: 38-48

Socrates “...will not men who are injured be deteriorated in that which is the proper virtue of man”?
Polemarchus: “Certainly”
Socrates: “And that human virtue is justice?”
Polemarchus: “To be sure.”
Socrates: “Then men who are injured are of necessity made unjust ?”
Polemarchus “That is the result.”
- Book I, Plato's Republic

“Brother Roger certainly fascinated people by his innocence, his instant comprehension, his look. And I think he saw, in some people’s eyes, that fascination could be transformed into mistrust or aggression. For someone who carries irresolvable conflicts within themselves, that innocence must have become intolerable.... His death set a mysterious seal on what he always was. He was not killed for a cause that he was defending. He was killed because of what he was. “
- “Why Brother Roger Died”, by Brother François of Taizé

When Jesus sent out his disciples to preach the Good News to the world, they had no comprehension of the greatness of the task that lay before them. Indeed, most of them expected Jesus to return quickly, within their lifetimes, to reclaim his Church, the assembly of those predestined to salvation. You don't have to read very far in the New Testament to find this opinion. It is in there. But the tale did not end the way they expected. All of them passed on, before the end came. Gradually, this Church dug in, for the long haul, often assimilated itself with the societies it was destined to change, sometimes comprising to ease its path in a hostile world. And yet, divided, often weak, sometimes corrupt, that Church never forgot Jesus's words. Indeed, it wrote them down, committed them to sacred books, memorized them and recited them over and over again. And as our story today will show, Christians everywhere realized the depths of truth for themselves, in ways the apostles never could have imagined. We speak of “apostolic succession”, of a “faith once delivered” to the saints of the Church, of a generation that “shall not pass away” before Christ returns in victory. But each generation learns these lessons anew, as the Church progresses in history, towards its destined end – the end that Jesus describes in the “Olivet Discourse” of Matthew 24.

In these few words, Jesus says a lot about what Christians can expect in the world to come. Life will not be easy for the faithful. The things they take most for granted – what could be more enduring than the great Temple in Jerusalem – will be utterly destroyed. There will be “wars and rumors of wars”. Earthquakes and famine. Worse yet, the people they love and respect will disappoint and betray them, so much that love itself “will grow cold”. Many will fall away, but none will be left out of the sound of the gospel message, which will be “preached...as a testimony to all nations”.

Does not the real world resemble this today ? And yet, in the New World, the truth of the gospel remains unfulfilled. The “birth pangs” of war and economic hardship are, as it were, built into the mechanics of the game – so while we don't have earthquakes here, the sense of continued crisis is the same.

Here in the eUSA, as war progresses in our borders, we see renewed calls to arms, with patriotic entreaties to unite against the common foe. The watchword is “Victory or Death”. Of course, this is not the first time the eUSA has been invaded before. And I would suggest that it is far from the last. Having been born into the New World at the trail end of WWIII, one of the subjects that has continued to fascinate me is how citizens react to foreign occupation. Do they become virtual refugees, wandering from region to region ? Do they collaborate with the foreign occupying power, take new jobs, perhaps even joining a new political party during the time in which their region remains under foreign rule ? Do they resist, pooling their resources and fighting on ? And what about the occupiers ? Do they make a concerted effort to gain and maintain control of the territories they conquer ? Do their policies seek to drive out the natives, replacing them with citizens from their own native land ? Or do they seek to “win the hearts and minds” of the people ? I ask these questions seriously, because the answers suggest how seriously the players take the game. How do the patriots and warmongers answer the claim, “This, too, shall pass” ? For those who still believe in the religion of game mechanics, I ask you – what is the game mechanic for irregular warfare, for passive resistance, for the social reality of the many who are simply caught up in the whirlwind ? What do you have to say about this ? What hope do you offer the many who you castigate as “apathetic” when in fact, the true mechanics of the game offer victory to the numerous, the rich and the fanatical ?

For it is here that Jesus and his followers part company with all the Zealots, always and everywhere. For those whose hope and whose vision is bound up with the things of this world, their end comes with the destruction of the Temple, in the self-immolation of Masada.

Witness the hundreds of lights in the Youtube video with which we began. Those are the same lights that burned before the Berlin Wall went down. The city in which the ceremony takes place is Cologne, a city that 62 years before had no light, the allied bombers having devastated it from one end to the other. But the mayor of that city, Konrad Adenauer, went on to found the new Germany, a Germany in which the light could shine yet once more. And then there is Brother Roger.

Brother Roger was the founder of the Taize Community. His full name was Roger Schütz-Marsauche, a citizen of Switzerland and son of a Protestant pastor in the Reformed Church. In 1940, after the fall of France, Roger, aged 25, bought an abandoned house in Taize, France, part of the Vichy Republic but just a few miles from German-occupied France. He began taking in refugees, including some Jews, who fled Nazi occupation. He was in Switzerland when the Third Reich moved into to occupy Vichy France as well, and did not return to Taize until 1944. His original group of two followers expanded to seven when the Taize order was formed in 1949. By the late 1960s, the Taize community had become an ecumenical order with Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Reformed Protestants with an expanded following among the younger generation. Taize became a major pilgrimage site in Europe, with over 100,000 visitors per year. While the music of Taize is entrancing, its message is very simple. God is love alone. And that love is natural and essential to the human condition.



Brother Roger writes in “A very simple reality” -

“Right at the depth of the human condition, lies the longing for a presence, the silent desire for a communion. Let us never forget that this simple desire for God is already the beginning of faith....So it becomes clear that faith – trusting in God – is a very simple reality, so simple that everyone could receive it. It is like surging upwards again and again, a thousand times, throughout our life, and until our very last breath.”

http://www.taize.fr/en_article1000.html

As Jesus predicted, and as one familiar with the history of the Christian Church, with the patterns of good and evil, Brother Roger died a violent death, at the hands of a thirty-six year old woman from Romania, a woman so spiritually disoriented that she could not even state why she came up behind him during the worship service to stab him three times in the back with a knife. Here is his obituary published by the Episcopal Church, with a kind of benediction by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams:

Brother Roger's Obituary



Brother Roger was ninety years old at the time of his death. He had led a full and rich and by any measure a successful and beautiful life. Why, then, was his life ended with a baptism of blood ?

There is no clear and indisputable answer to this question, but here is mine. It would be all to easy, it is all to easy to make the pilgrimage to Taize and imagine that one is in heaven itself. I had a friend, a priest now retired who did make that pilgrimage, and the things he told me about what happens there are astounding. Brother Roger's death is a reminder to the Church that its job is not yet done – in spite of the true beauty and innocence of Taize, evil remains yet to be conquered. Christ's return remains in the future, not the past, and the great miracles we witness are just reminders of what can happen when God's Holy Spirit shows up to change the world.

Could it happen here ? Could we see that kind of outbreak in the New World ? I believe so, and so should you.