Babylon - rejocing in or mourning her fall?

The Young Adult/Seeker class I have been attending off and on here is going through Revelations. We have some unchurched seekers in the class, which makes for some interesting questions from people taking things literally: "The four living creatures are covered with eyes. . . Are those on their t-shirts?"
"Who is the Bride of Christ?" . . . "Uh, Mary Magdalene?" (Thank you, Dan Brown).

[Just for the record, I am certainly not a scholar on the end times and don't even know if I am a pre-, post- or a-millenialist.]

This past week in Sunday school, we were in Revelations 18 which talks about the fall of Babylon. One guy said, "Now wait a minute. . . Babylon is a city and now it's a prostitute? I don't understand". I think I got the guy to understand that Babylon was like a prostitute, leading the people of the world astray.

It wasn't until later that I realized that a good way to explain Babylon in revelations was as a symbol of a system. It is not uncommon for us to do this with cities and places representing a much broader system:

• Hollywood (representing the entire entertainment industry, including films and other content made all around the world): "the evils of Hollywood" or "Hollywood is serving up a lot of good fare this summer." 
• Washington (representing the government of the United States): "Washington is out of touch with America." "Washington is destroying the economy." - Those are from a google search I just did of "Washington is"
• Wall Street (representing the stock market and wider trading system): "Wall Street needs to be reformed." We're not talking about tearing up the street and redoing it. Here's another headline I found: "Washington is annoyed at Wall Street's failure to panic".

Now what got my writing, though, was thinking about what sort of world system Babylon could actually entice all the leaders of the world and the enrich the merchants of the world while selling the rest of us on luxuries.

For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”(Rev 18:3)

Babylon can not represent a single city or even country, but rather an entire system - a multinational economic and entertainment and information system that bundles up hollywood and the cult of celebrity, the internet, google searches, multinational companies spanning the globe and often abusing people in one part of the world so we can have bottled water and ipads and chocolate and cheap goods.

11 The merchants of the world will weep and mourn for her, for there is no one left to buy their goods. 12 She bought great quantities of gold, silver, jewels, and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet cloth; things made of fragrant thyine wood, ivory goods, and objects made of expensive wood; and bronze, iron, and marble. 13 She also bought cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, horses, chariots, and bodies—that is, human slaves. [e.g. Human Trafficking, and the sex trade]
14 “The fancy things you loved so much
are gone,” they cry.
“All your luxuries and splendor
are gone forever,
never to be yours again.”

But what struck me the most was that the church is called to COME OUT of Babylon, and then to REJOICE at her downfall.

4 Then I heard another voice calling from heaven,
“Come away from her, my people.
Do not take part in her sins,
or you will be punished with her.


20 Rejoice over her fate, O heaven
and people of God and apostles and prophets!
For at last God has judged her
for your sakes.

This sounds easy, of course, but what if the downfall of Babylon means all the things we have become so accustomed to are gone? 

• What if it means a massive fall of the stock market so that what is happening now looks like a boom? Will we we in the church be rejoicing or moaning and looking for economic solutions? 
• What if all those cheap goods at the "Buy More" and the "Stuff Mart" are no longer available? 
• What if the internet crashes and is gone, no more to bring us valuable information but also no more to lead us astray? (I asked THAT question in Sunday School and got a rather surprised  "What?? The Internet will be gone?" question from one guy.) 
• What if the whole transportation system breaks down and we are stuck with only what we get locally? No more lattes with Indonesian Coffee and chocolate from slave labor in Ivory Coast. 
• What if there are no more updates on Charlie Sheen,  and Justin Bieber and Brangelina on TMZ? 
• What if there are no more films out of Hollywood, no more songs out of Nashville? 
• What if my android apps are suddenly gone and your ipad suddenly non-functional? 

What then? (see this great song by Greg X. Volz entitled "What then?"

It really got me thinking whether we'd be rejoicing or mourning the fall of Babylon.

“Come away from her, my people.
Do not take part in her sins,
or you will be punished with her.  (Rev 18:4)

Parallels, or Widening Spirals

 

In much of the reading I have been doing over the past months, I have come across people saying that Jesus did X, Y and Z in the New Testament and that those things parallel A, B and C in the Old Testament part of God’s salvation story.  We miss the ties between these events because the words that screamed out a connection to those First Century readers fly past us so quickly and mean nothing to us given the cultural and historical distance. 

Think about certain phrases, places or objects today that are so loaded with baggage that just to use them sends obvious messages. Consider these situations:  

• A biography in which the main character shows up and begins his public exposure on Wall Street or at Ground Zero or in San Francisco or on Skid Row. What would the setting evoke to the readers?
• A potential but unannounced Presidential candidate shows up at Iowa State Fair. The relevance is not lost on most Americans but may be totally missed by Europeans, even those familiar with our politics.
• A musician journeys to Abbey Road to record their first album.
• A politician talks about “choice” or “life” or “big government” or the “little guy”.  We know instantly where they stand.

I often wonder how much we miss in the Bible because we miss the cultural clues. I know most of these parallel storylines have never dawned on me. It’s probably wrong to call them parallel storylines, as God’s intentionally is obvious. they are more like the same story, being looped back around again in an ever-widening spiral.  

The most famous example is made explicit by Paul in Romans 5 where Adam and Jesus are compared and contrasted.

Here are the ones I have come across so far (listed in chronological order from the Old Testament).

1. Genesis 2: God breathes on Adam to give him the breath of life and makes him a living soul. John 20:22 – Jesus (resurrected) appears to disciples, breathes on them and says “receive the Holy Spirit  (Eugene Peterson, Christ plays in 10,000 places, p. 106)
2. The Garden of Eden, the Garden of Gethsemane and the Garden in which Jesus was buried and resurrected. I have seen at least four authors talk about the fact that Jews had an automatic flashing of thought towards the Garden of Eden whenever the word garden was mentioned. They argue that all references to the garden locations in the gospels was intentional, to make a point.

In a garden we fell; In a garden he prayed, ‘Not my will but yours be done’. The cross has made a way so we can enter in to go back to the Garden once again. The cross has made a way. Forever I will say, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.’ (Jonathan David Helser, from the song“The Reward”.)

• In the first garden, man chose to live outside of the way God made for them to live and death entered the picture.
• Jesus was buried in the second garden and was rose again. The message is that there is a “new Adam on the scene, and he is reversing the curse of death by conquering it.. . . He’s reclaiming ccreation. He’s entering into it and restoring it and renewing God’s plan for the world.” (Rob Bell, Velvet Jesus, p. 156 – 157)

3. Jesus was stripped at his crucifixion. This parallels the genesis account of the fall, where Adam was naked and unashamed until he sinned. Jesus was shamed and stripped naked in order to free us from our sin. In this, Jesus shows the ultimate vulnerability of the defenseless. (from the Stations of the Cross)
4. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple parallels the 10 plagues of Egypt. The Plagues were not a punishment on Egypt, but rather a display of God’s sovereignty compared with Pharaoh’s lack of control over the physical world. The Jerusalem temple had become godless place, constructed by a godless King (Herod). Jesus’ sovereignty was obscured there. Pharisees recognized this as the issue when they asked, “By whose authority do you do this?” (Peterson, Christ plays in 10,000 places. p. 168)
5. Passover meal parallels Communion. An ordinary meal eaten in community the night before salvation was provided. No special food or clothes or candles. The Passover celebration took 7 days which again parallels Creation. (Peterson, p. 175)
6. Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years & Jesus temptation for 40 days. His temptation parallels Israel’s 40 years in the desert. Israel faced demons of comfort and food. Jesus faced them all. (Charles Foster: The Sacred Journey, p. 66)

Surely there are more. Feel free to suggest some.

Hagar, the Seen

So the other day I was reading through the Sacred Space daily and weekly reading. This is a great source for a contemplative liturgy, run by Irish Jesuits.
Anyway, there was a reference to Hagar from Genesis 16:1-16

Whenever I am able to pause, and allow myself a time of quiet, I can become conscious of God’s presence to me. I enter into the deepest reality of my life, where I am before the living God. This has always been the experience of people of faith. ‘You are the Living God, who sees me!’ Hagar said, for instance, out in the wilderness. She was alone, and in need, having fled away from Abraham and Sarah. But then she realised how God was close to her, and calling out to her

 I think I have always been struck by this passage. Abraham and Sarah were not willing to wait for the promised offspring and so cooked up this plan whereby Abraham would father a child by Sarah's Egyptian servant Hagar. The result is Ishmael and sudden enmity between Sarah and Hagar. Did no one foresee this? Hagar lords it over Sarah and then Sarah abuses her and she runs away.

I think what got me thinking this time is that Hagar and eventually Ishmael are out on the margins of the story. I wrote back in may about "The God who is Embarrassingly Undignified and Messy". The more I read, the more I see examples of God working in the margins.

If I were God (and thankfully for us all, I am not), I think I would have said, "Well, Abraham and Sarah really have fouled things up here. I'll fix it by giving them Isaac, and just ignore this whole side-story with Hagar and Ishmael." But instead we have God sending his angel out meet Hagar in her distress and comfort her. He said he had heard her cry of distress, and was giving her a son. Pretty impressive for a slave woman. He even blesses her and promises that her son will be a mighty nation, albeit one that will be untamed like a wild donkey and live in enmity with his brothers. Presumably since he was concerned with their sort at the very beginning, that concern lives on, a lesson to remember as we pray for Ishmael's spiritual descendants this Ramadan. (see 30-days prayer guide Aug 1-30, 2011)

It is also interesting that God doesn't alter his plan to make Abraham's child through Sarah to be a great nation that will bless all nations (Genesis 12:1-2). But He doesn't exclude this new thread and works with the people in the margins of the story. He hears and attends to their needs as well.

" Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, “You are the God who sees me.” She also said, “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?”Genesis 16:3

 Be encouraged, especially if you feel you are sitting out in the margins, that God is the One who Sees you and hears you in your distress.

Superheros, Villains and Wizards - Of Myths and Men

It's summer time and that means we have a spate of comic book movies - Green Lantern, Captain America, Thor - and related sci-fi/fantasy movies like Harry Potter. Look for people camping out for midnight screenings, grown men taking a long lunch to see them the next day, Happy Meal ties ins and soda cans emblazoned with the latest hero.

WHY are these movies are so popular? Why do the studios keep making them? Well, the obvious answer to the second question is that they consistently rake in the big bucks. But that just begs the question: Why do they resonate with us? What itch do they scratch?

Before I go on, in the interest of full disclosure, I just saw Captain America in 3D with my nephews, caught Thor earlier this year and the last Harry Potter on opening weekend. I stood in line back in the 80s for the first Batman, saw the entire Lord of the Rings franchise (in both English and French) and have Geordi La Forge figurine sitting next to my computer back in Mali. Oh, and I was walking through the Hotel Ivoire in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire in 1999 with an American and a Malian when we saw a poster advertising Star Wars: Phantom Menace (right). It was not easy explaining to our Malian friend why this alternate universe was so compelling to us.


Okay, back to the question at hand. Why do these movies resonate with us? Why are they "rebooting" the Spider-Man franchise next year when they first Spider-man came out in 2002? Why do 130,000 people (in odd costumes) pack out Comic-Con, the annual comic/sci-fi convention held each year in San Diego?

I think these movies fill a basic need for mythology, which our culture is lacking. Mythology helps us probe important issues, sound out what is right and wrong, and feel our way forward in a dark and confusing time where truth has gone missing.  We are searching for real heroes.

JRR Tolkien convinced an unbelieving C.S. Lewis that Christianity was a myth, but one that "just happened to be true." As the one True Myth with its True Hero gets farther and farther from our collective consciousness, we grope for others to lead the way and settle for Captain America, Wolverine or Toby Macguire in tights.

Myths resonate with us because they mirror the story that God is telling through history, how his Son sacrificed himself to reconcile humanity to himself and usher in a new kingdom of righteousness and justice.

How many times do you see our comic book and fantasy heros sacrificing themselves for others (and then brought back to life)? Gandalf, [spoiler] Harry Potter - "the child who lived, come to die", Superman, Neo, Spock - "The good of the many outweighs the good of the one.", ET. In the Thor movie, he sacrifices himself to save earth and is brought back to life by the high god Odin, his father. 


The American culture, having come from so many others, does not have a solid mythology to call our own. Greek, Roman  and Norse mythology is too far removed to be all that relevant. Clash of the Titans, anyone?
The closest we come to is what we have inherited from the Brits: Robin Hood and King Arthur, which admittedly serve us well and are frequently revisited in both books and movies.

Still, J.R.R. Tolkien said he wrote The Lord of the Rings to "provide England with a mythology of its own".

In the American experience, we seem to have generated a mythology expressed in comic book heroes and Star Trek and Star Wars.

What does our choice of myths say about us?

• There is almost always a serious technological element that explains the supernatural side of things. Radioactive spiders, genetic experiments, wonder drugs, or computer programs creating both the villains and the heroes. In a sense, this is a useful expression of our fear of rapid technological change. In the Star Trek universe, we see the false promise of technology bringing an era of peace, a utopia (though it rarely seems to hold). 

• The hero is never perfect in these stories. He often undergoes an interior struggle between good and evil. A sort of Romans 7 conflict with the flesh. There is a temptation to use his power for selfish means. Or just to take more power to help more people. cf. Dark Spidey vs Good Spidey. There are times when we identify with Spiderman's internal battle against Dark Spidey, Bruce Wayne wanting to throw in the towel and be normal, Frodo wanting to put on the ring. Superman seems to be the most "Christ-like" of our comic heroes, and oddly enough the public has lost interest in him, possibly because he is seen as too good and not conflicted enough. (Did Smallville erase some of that? Should it have?)

• The Good guys are always very good and the villains very bad. In a sense this characterization is probably inherent in the genre, which creates prototypical symbols. That is all fine and good but in an increasingly complex, multinational world it seems so many issues are really black and white. (What if your biofuels save the planet but end up starving folks on the other side of the globe?) 
• In recent years it seems the villains have just gotten darker and darker. Compare the 1960's era TV Joker, to Jack Nicholson's Joker in 1989. Already a big shift. Then flash forward to Heath Ledger's 2008 version. 

The extreme nature of the bad guys makes it easy to build a case for justified violence. I mean if your bad guy makes Hitler look like Elmo, then of course, it's okay to use excessive force. Once you get used to that in your movies, then in real life you have to paint your enemies as villains when often the situation is a bit less clear.

• There is a tendency to wrap your hero in the flag of the country he comes from and this can add to an over the top patriotism. Captain America is OBVIOUSLY dressed up in the American flag, but I seem to recall movie posters with Superman and Spiderman draped in the flag.
• A superhero has superpowers and there is a tendency for "Might to make Right". Captain America was a good counterpoint to this where the hero was chosen because he was a weakling who had experience bullying. He ended up a pretty decent picture of the meek use of power (though that got a bit lost as the action built up). 
• Masks and dual identities. What's with that? 
• Almost all of these "universes" are based on a series of books or comics, but we still create a collective myth for Batman, or Star Trek and the fanboys will argue about whether the new plotline is "canonical" or not. Goes to show the importance we place on written texts and fidelity to them. Note the use of the word "canonical" which is normally reserved for Scripture. And before you judge too harshly, consider whether you'd score better on a test  on the Lord of the Rings or the stories in Genesis and Exodus.

Well, that's all I have on this one. Tune in next week, "same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel".