“It’s about timeline!” A Homily for the Feast of Saints Peter & Paul

“As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation.”

Pop quiz: Facebook. Blessing? Curse? Take it or leave it?

Newsflash: If you’re neutral, you might just be in the minority. Chances are, then, you’d have strong feelings about getting an unexpected request: “Paul wants to be your friend on Facebook.”

Paul ─ aka the Apostle to the Gentiles ─ on Facebook. Given the sheer magnitude of his unsolicited opinions on absolutely everything from meat to marriage, the mind boggles at the thought.

Picture it: Up-to-the-minute postings to Paul’s Timeline. A link to his brain-binged blog. The ‘places lived.’ The ‘likes.’ The ‘shares.’ The ‘friends.’ The invitations-without-end to ‘friend’ his friends. The comments commenting on comments.

Not to mention, at-long-last clarity re: his waffling takes on slavery, women in the Church, diet and dating.

And the frankly-implausible opportunity to see Paul ─ the poster-child of homophobia ─ evolve on same-sex orientation and rights.

Paul the Apostle ─ of all people ─ on Facebook. What could possibly go wrong?

A lot.      

Especially if folks not his ‘friends’ were to use his own data to do him in ─ or at best, silence him ─ or dry up the sweat equity he’s invested in the cause of Christ.

What data could be used against him?

Now, there are all sorts of incriminating things social media junkies tell Facebook:

§ What you look like in a bikini or scanty clothing. Or minus clothes altogether. (“Oh, my eyes!”)

§ How often you get trashed and with whom (selfies included).

§ The gender of the objects of your affection.

§ Where you go to church. How often. Or never.

§ The movies you see. The books you read. The music that fries your brain.

§ The pundits you worship. The causes you peddle. The politicians you cheer.

Just the regular Facebook fare.

The fallout? Vox.com blogger Dylan Matthews invites you to check out one of the most sobering apps you’re ever likely stumble upon. It’s called ‘Trial by Timeline’ (www.trialbytimeline.org.nz), created by Amnesty International to raise awareness of abuses of human rights around the globe.

Two principles underpinning ‘Trial by Timeline’: (1) As citizens of a western democracy, we tend to take human rights for granted, unaware to what extent abuses are occurring elsewhere. And (2) using Facebook as a data-source, let’s say the ‘Timeline’ function, anything you’ve ever said or done may be used against you by less-tolerant governments, should you ever find yourself under their jurisdiction.

In other words, the ‘Trial by Timeline’ app ─ with your consent ─ analyzes the public information you and your friends post on Facebook. But more than merely analyzing your data, the app creates a chilling on-screen sentencing simulation, first incarcerating you in a 6 x 6 cell, and then “interrogating” each of your Facebook friends using their published data, as garish barbed wire scrolls up your blackened screen. For example, using my info:

Interrogating Kim H______.

Interrogating Bill T______.

Interrogating Donna J______, Colin B______,  Marian K______ … high school friends … college chums … colleagues … family … and on and on, probing my entire ‘friends’ list.

The final profile? An intimidating map of the world with the number of crimes I’ve committed and the number of countries I’ve committed them in.

‘Trial by Timeline’ then shows the countries where my “criminal” activity took place and the punishment I can expect to incur.

This is just a partial listing of my many crimes, but as you can see, the results establish me as a criminal of the first order in regimes around the world intolerant of my politics, my religion, my sexual orientation, and whatever else may trip the wire of a human-rights-blind jurisdiction.

But what about Paul? Where could he run afoul of hostile constituencies and governments?

As a speculative entry point, take my ‘Trial by Timeline’ profile: 103 convictions … for 7 crimes … in 34 countries. Beaten 20 times. Tortured 15. Imprisoned 18. Lashed 5. Persecuted 72 times.

Now, you only live once, but according to the ‘Trial by Timeline’ app, I’ve been stoned to death twice. Hanged once. Killed by extremists 46 times.

Surprise: No beheading. But I haven’t thrown in the towel yet!

(Note to self: Think twice before vacationing in Afghanistan.)

And what about Paul, his stats? Obviously, with Facebook an anachronism and Mark Zuckerberg not even a micro-speck on the horizon, it’s hard to get Amnesty International numbers for Paul. And of course the borders and states are different, while ─ ominously ─ many of the cultures of human rights abuse are not.

And yet, using the app’s criteria of offenses ─ examples: for being a Christian (triggering charges of blasphemy) … for engaging in unlawful assembly … for publishing his ahead-of-its-time manifesto advocating equal rights (“There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female for all are one in Christ”) ─ for this partial list of crimes and misdemeanors, the Apostle, under the thumb of several regimes, would have been:

Beaten. And he was. Over and over.

Tortured. And he was. Often.

Imprisoned. In fact, many, many times.

Lashed (or at least threatened with lashing). Check.

Persecuted. Frequent flyer miles in the persecution category.

Beheaded. Bingo!

An impressive rap sheet, if human rights abuses committed against Paul are predictive of fidelity to Jesus Christ.

But they point to more: the nature of Paul’s own radicalism and the consequences he knew would be his when he undertook the joy ─ and the responsibilities ─ of sharing the Gospel.

That’s another way of saying, Paul knew and accepted the fact that he was a marked man: marked for extinction not just by his natural enemies (those who sought to debunk his claims that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God), but even by those you would think would be his friends.

Case in point ─ a rather bizarre case in point ─ that gets lost in the glitzier markers of Paul’s career, like his Damascus Road conversion, the missionary journeys, his trials, the shipwrecks.

Paul is on one of his forays to Jerusalem well after he has launched several of his wildly-successful (and some not-so-successful) missions to convert non-Jews to Christ all over the eastern Mediterranean.

Ironically, in Jerusalem this time, the imminent threats to Paul come from fellow Jewish Christians. They accuse him of apostasy because he doesn’t force non-Jewish converts to adopt Jewish law and custom. To believe in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, they say, you have to be a Jew or become a Jew. Much too fussy for Paul’s understanding of the benefits of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection available to all ─ without going through conversion-to-Judaism hoops.

So, to call off the hounds ─ or at least the extremists hounding Paul ─ the powers-that-be in the Church at Jerusalem come up with a looks-perfect-on-paper PR stunt. It involves signing up Paul for a “highly-visible public display of extreme Judaism” ─ one that will boost his already hefty Jew-of-the-Jews credentials.

They advise him to take ─ in the sight of as many people as possible, and yet, anonymously (as part of a larger group) ─ the vow to become a Nazirite.

The Nazirites: elite Jews ─ arguably, more elite even than the Pharisees. To become a Nazirite, you go to the Temple during peak hours and ─ with all the Temple-goers looking on ─ you sign on to strict Nazirite vows and make the required sacrifices. And to show just how serious you are, you get your head shaved right there in the sight of God and everybody. You burn the hair as a sacrificial offering.

“After all that,” Paul’s handlers argue, “who’s going to challenge ─ what Jewish Christian is going to challenge ─ your Jewish bona fides?”

Well, the scheme backfires. A cranky cohort of kibitzers catch word that there’s been a Paul-sighting in the Temple. They go postal. Nabbed, Paul is about to be torn limb-from-limb.

But he escapes by the skin of his teeth, thanks to the intervention of Roman soldiers ─ that’s right, Roman soldiers ─ who grant him safe conduct out of the Temple … and into house arrest, triggering a chain of events that eventually find Paul pleading his case ─ in Rome ─ before the emperor Nero, no less.

Spoiler alert: Does. Not. Go. As planned (see beheading above).

Once more, then ─ as ever ─ Paul being caught in the act of living dangerously by signing on to the mandate to follow Jesus, and by accepting the consequences.

Proof? “As for me,” Paul is said to have written, “I am already being poured out as a libation (a sacrifice).” Code for: “I don’t just accept the consequences , I embrace them as a condition of faith in Christ.”

But what do Paul’s personal decisions have to do with any of us?

They suggest that if we haven’t racked up a ‘Trial by Timeline’ rap sheet like Paul’s, what are we doing wrong?

Or, what right and good and noble and risky things are we not doing to bring the Good News of God in Christ to our neighbors here and everywhere?

Bottomline: What prevents each of us from ‘friending’ Paul ─ joining our name to his ─ in the festal hymn we sing today?

Paul floods the world with piercing light
to scatter shades of gathering night.
He puts to flight dark error’s stain,
convinced God’s truth alone will reign.

Amen.

“Of Monsters and Memory”: Reflections on the Feast of Corpus Christi

Wrinkled and crinkled. Heroically reluctant to give up. Forever touring the world on a mission to make us scream.

Mick Jagger? Paul McCartney? Madonnna?

Perhaps.

But more likely ─ according to New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane ─ Godzilla, recently revived from the ultra-oceanic depths by director Gareth Edwards. And proving once more that ─ hard as you may try, over and over and over again since his Japanese film debut in 1954 ─ you can’t kill Godzilla ─ or, Gozira, as the Japanese style the nuclear-triggered monster of biblical proportions.

And speaking of “biblical,” is there a subtle theological message in going from ‘Gozira’ in Japanese to ‘Godzilla’ in English? Darned if I know, and I’ve Googled every which way to find out. No luck. But there’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is: There just might be a dissertation in this. The bad news: Why do I think there’s even the remotest possibility that only in America might someone ─ somewhere ─ be tempted to say, “We’re the folks who put ‘God’ in Godzilla”?

But I digress.

To refocus: Doing a riff on an observation made by Slate.com film critic Dana Stevens awhile back, what if, roughly a millennium from now, an archaeologist were to unearth a DVD of the latest Godzilla reboot? The archaeologist would ask, “Why did the people of the early 21^st century still need Godzilla?”

It’s an excellent question, because we have good reason to be ambivalent about a monster that, while not fond of humans, often comes to our rescue, fending off the likes of by-far-more–menacing MUTOs (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms).

So, why do the people of the early 21^st century still need the likes of Godzilla? “Nostalgia, repetition, compulsion,” explains Stevens, “and love of big, dumb spectacle.”

Note that “nostalgia” heads the list. Why? In the wake of the latest installment of ‘Godzilla’ or ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Indiana Jones,’ critic Alain Spira of Paris Match suggests: “[With these franchise movies,] you know what you’re going to see. What you see is what you get. And when you leave the theater, you’re happy.” Altogether, I’d say these phenomena drive the engine of nostalgia.

And then there’s the math-laced business plan. Nostalgia ― lumbering up there on the silver screen or splayed out on your own domestic flat screen ─ sells tickets, DVDs, Netflix subscriptions, Saturday morning cartoon spinoffs, even cinematic retread/sequel/prequel-themed mega-Whoppers at Burger King.

Problem is: Down here on the ground ─ far removed from entrepreneurial Fantasyland ─ nostalgia subverts the reality we have to deal with. That’s because nostalgia is made up of what has to be true about the past ─ as our imagination edits it ─ in order to make the present more endurable and less complex. When we’re dealing in nostalgia, a lot of reality ends up on the cutting-room floor.

Result? Because nostalgia has a low tolerance for nuance and contradictions, it makes for false memories.

And this creates a problem for the matter at hand this morning: Memory ─ stripped of false recollection or even wishful thinking ─ is especially critical today as we celebrate Corpus Christi (the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ).

After all, what is Jesus’ command at the first Eucharistic meal? “Do this in remembrance of me.”

Not much wiggle room for nostalgia.

That’s because when we faithfully follow Jesus’ intent for the Eucharist ― when it comes to where the Eucharist may take us ― we don’t always know what we’re going to see. God is full of surprises!

Then, too, what you see ― bread and wine ― isn’t really what you get: the true Body and the true Blood of Christ!

And the Eucharist definitely isn’t about making sure you “leave happy.”

That’s a hard one, because, this enterprise ─ the Mass ─ isn’t about our happiness. It is about memory: doing “this” (the music, the prayers, the readings and reflection, bread and wine) in remembrance of Christ. Happiness not guaranteed. Better, in fact, you should leave troubled.

Why?

Each Eucharist we celebrate is designed ― by Jesus himself ― to have in it a heavy dose of Jesus himself: the unpredictable, the dangerous, and the threatening.

Brings to mind Jesuit theologian and gadfly Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “The Eucharist must invade our lives.”

That’s what comes with believing, as Catholic Christians in the Anglican tradition, that Jesus Christ himself is truly present in the bread and in the wine we consecrate in this and every Eucharist.

And if Jesus Christ is truly present here, the dangerous way Jesus led his life is also here truly present.

For example, Jesus grounds the first Eucharistic meal ― which we call the ‘Last Supper’ ― in the Passover meal of his own Jewish people: a meal that is a dangerous meal because it’s a disruptive, liberating meal. It celebrates the Jewish people’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. For oppressed and oppressor ─ or for the 99 percent and the 1 percent ─ a disruptive campaign all around.

But Jesus makes of that meal something even more liberating, more disruptive because Jesus sets that Passover meal, as St. Paul reminds us, in the context of Jesus’ own betrayal, arrest, and death: “The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed,” Paul says, “took a loaf of bread … he took the cup also.”

That means, in the breaking of bread and in the sharing of wine ― Jesus’ body broken, his blood poured out for the life of the world ― Jesus perfects the threatening pattern of his own life: the parameters of the new world, the new kingdom, the new creation that is coming into existence at the very moment he himself appears most powerless.

Bottomline? Jesus makes that first Eucharistic moment a moment of ultimate solidarity ― God’s solidarity ― with all the powerless down through history even to this present moment. What could be more dangerous?

Meaning: through this Eucharist, Jesus is truly present with ─ and in solidarity with ─ our neighbors all around the country ─ neighbors everywhere ─ reeling from the devastation of tornadoes, severe weather, and climate change.

Jesus is truly present and in solidarity with the targets of genocide in parts of Africa torn by religion-on-religion violence.

Jesus is truly present and in solidarity with every homeless person on our streets … and with the ignored and neglected elderly … with hungry and starving children everywhere … with same-gendered couples fighting for marriage equality in jurisdictions that conspire with the most religiously-constrictive to deny them equal protection under the law.

And this morning, Jesus is truly present and in solidarity with each immigrant child on our soil held in confinement waiting for our leaders in the Senate and Congress to summon the courage to adopt sweeping and progressive immigration reform.

Read: Jesus ― revealed before our very eyes in simple staples of bread and wine ― doesn’t hide, veiled behind the pointed pining ─ by a threatened few ─ for a past that never was … like claiming (as do some) that slaves on antebellum plantations ─ many whipped, beaten, and shackled ─ were happier and better off before emancipation.

If that were the case, there would be no Passover, no Eucharist.

Breaking bread and sharing wine before his suffering and death, then, Jesus delivers a devastating indictment to all who benefit from the failure to love neighbor and God, either through direct duplicity or, far more common, the complicity of silence and denial.

Jesus delivers a devastating indictment to anyone who thinks this Eucharist is a blueprint for keeping things the way we imagined they once were before “Those Evil Awful People Over There” mucked things up by demanding what they are owed: to be treated with dignity and respect by all and at all times and for all time.

And Jesus delivers a devastating indictment to anyone who thinks this liturgy is merely an exercise in good taste. Because as Richard Cardinal Cushing said, “Liturgy which does not move its participants to action is mere ceremonialism. Action which does not find its source in the liturgy is mere humanitarianism.”

The point is: The Eucharist as designed by Jesus yanks us kicking and screaming into reality. It’s seldom pretty. But it’s a reality ― if we take the Eucharist for what it is in all its menacing potential ― that will morph into the shape of God’s kingdom.

This is the point made by Frank Weston, the legendary Bishop of Zanzibar, in the early decades of the last century. At that point, the long struggle to recover within Anglicanism a more Catholic understanding of the Real Presence of our Lord in the Eucharist was for the most part won. And tabernacles (or aumbries) for reserving the Sacrament were becoming increasingly commonplace.

With the dust beginning to settle, Bishop Weston declared: “If you are prepared to fight for the right [to adore] Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before [the] Tabernacle and walk ― with Christ mystically present in you ― out into the streets, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your [communities]. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum.”

That’s letting the Eucharist “invade” you!

And if we fail to embrace the danger, the risk, and the opportunity of that invasion, what then?

Picture this: We started with Godzilla and other movies that appeal to our hunger for nostalgia. In a wildly popular movie of the genre ─ Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ─ after a spate of the requisite swashbuckling acrobatics, Indy retrieves the coveted Cross of Coronado from one of his arch-enemies. Brandishing the brilliant artifact, Indy shouts hoarsely, “This belongs in a museum!”

The villain’s response? “You belong in a museum, Professor Jones!”

No danger, then? No risk in this Eucharist? No opportunity?

We all may as well be in … a museum!

Amen.