Culture

No rescue!

Rainbow Shabbat, by Judy Chicago.
Rainbow Shabbat, by Judy Chicago (1992). From the Brooklyn Museum: the piece is the last image in a Holocaust project the artist created with her husband, Donald Woodman. 

This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

Whatever your faith community or theological persuasion, on Easter Sunday let’s be clear: The world is unredeemed. No amount of “redeemed and not yet” theological hocus pocus will do.

Rituals have a hard time with reality. Theology is the easy way out.

Theology is patriotism without a national flag. Though, if you’ve noticed in our churches and synagogues, flags have a way of slipping in. Check out the pastor with the American flag by his side. Not to be outdone, the rabbi has Israel’s flag by his side, too.

Quite a patriotic scene.

But if we’re going to be clear about out unredeemed/unliberated world, we need to add the obvious: What we do and don’t do in the face of injustice defines our faith or lack thereof. Simple as that.

Easter and Passover place us in a bind. How can Christians celebrate Easter with their own history of Holocaust, previous events of atrocity – shall we speak of the aftermath of 1492 in the Americas? – and the injustice that well-meaning Christians perpetrate today? How can Jews celebrate Passover while the oppression of Palestinians becomes permanent?

The “no rescue” prophets aren’t going anywhere near this religious – and political – charade.

Where do the “no rescue” prophets go? Some Christians remain Christian in a radical mode. Some Jews remain Jews in a radical mode. The difference is one of expressed faith. Radical Christians deepen their faith to survive the exile that awaits them. Radical Jews leave Judaism behind as a form of irredeemable hypocrisy.

Or maybe exile is the Jewish way of embodying faith. Thank God, Hosanna to the Highest isn’t the Jewish way. Can Christians learn a thing or two about their faith by exploring this Jewish exile embodiment and holding back on their endless and triumphal resurrection proclamations?

The Christian religious/secular Jewish twain shall meet in exile. When both Jews and Christians realize that there’s no going back, something interesting is going to happen. Hold on to your hats.

The Jewish prophets today are decolonizing the Biblical prophetic – in order to set the prophetic tradition free.

Christians of Conscience are trying to pry themselves away from Constantinian Christianity – to set Jesus free.

Being seen at the Passover Seder and church on Easter Sunday to show everyone how Jewish and Christian you are can’t continue – can it?

The troubling question remains: Does doing Easter and Passover the “right” way set us free? Or no matter the intention, does it deepen our Constantinian entanglement?

We’ve had the innovative Easters and Passovers for a long time now. Everything is the same – and getting worse. Time for something different?

The “no rescue” prophets aren’t much help as yet another Passover/Easter season comes to close. They aren’t going to provide a rescue ritual to cover over injustice.

No rituals until there is justice?

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Justice is a symmetry of rights corresponding with obligations. That’s why Justice is depicted blind. The EU calls on Israel to reverse its expansionist plans: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/04/19/eu-calls-on-israel-to-reverse-expansionist-plans/
Meanwhile Israel Firsters in Congress and AIPAC call for more deadly hypocrisy, all the while wrapping themselves in the American flag and Jewish star flag.

“Christians of Conscience are trying to pry themselves away from Constantinian Christianity – to set Jesus free.”

About 40% of American Christians that are keeping Israel out of jail, are heading in the opposite direction by getting their state to continue sponsoring and even increasing its help of Israel, not to set Jesus free but to tie him down and provoke his return for the final coming and battle with the devil. To fulfil this vocation, those Christians are helping the Zionists rid Jerusalem of its non-Jewish inhabitants, a primary condition for the second return to happen. Marc is again forcefully dragging all the Christians on the Jews’ Palestinian joy ride. Can’t figure out why.

Flags in synagogues and churches have nothing to do with religion, they are simply a political statement that have no business being there. Marc is needlessly stretching in relating Christianity’s 1492 to what the Jews have been doing to the Palestinians. He didn’t need to go that far back; not that long ago, Stalin’s genocide of the Ukrainians was as bad as the Zionists’ genocide of the Palestinians.

Hello, Marc.

You wrote:
Whatever your faith community or theological persuasion, on Easter Sunday let’s be clear: The world is unredeemed.

Rabbi Maimonides, the Rambam considered Isaiah 43:4 Messianic and also thought it meant the Messiah would be killed. The verse says.
He shall not fail nor be crushed, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.
Why does it not just say that he will not be crushed, period? Instead, it proposes that isles will be waiting for his law when he does his work. In other words there is a period during the Messianic era when the islands are still in wait for his law. The redemption is not instantly absolute everywhere. I wish it were, of course!!

The fundamental mistake here is treating religions that are not primarily about politics or social transformation as though they are.

It’s hard to shake off my Protestant past in looking at this, but speaking as an ex-Protestant Christian, there is no Biblical basis for expecting the redemption of the world prior to Christ’s return. Period. (That may not be true in the Catholic or Orthodox traditions.) That understanding hasn’t prevented the church from celebrating its rituals over the centuries.

Your liberation theology decontexualizes Christian social teaching removing its dependence on an expected direct intervention by God. It’s basically humanism dressed up in religious garments, in an attempt to look more authoritative.

And while Christianity might not be solely about individual salvation, it surely is partly about individual salvation. The resurrection is at the very least about the salvation of individuals from the punishment for sin. Whitewash this and you whitewash core Christian theological beliefs.

If you want to give it a symbolic humanistic gloss, okay, but don’t expect to be taken seriously. Again, religious liberals want the aura of authority without submitting to the discipline of what the Bible says, or about what the church says.

I would add that the attempt to impose a concept of collective Christian guilt on all Christians for what any Christians have ever done is going to fall flat.

Christians who believe that they have been saved from eternal death by Christ’s death and resurrection are not going to stop celebrating Easter.

Who is your audience for an article like this?

Christians are to endure in the practice of their faith, not abandon it because justice does not yet rule on planet earth.

You are either completely out of touch with the main stream of Christianity, or you just don’t care and are quite happy to re-make it any old way to suit your beliefs. But who are you and why should any Christian listen?