15 October 2023
Exodus 32:1-14
At times, I have mentioned Martin Luther from this pulpit, one of the key figures in the development of Protestant Christianity, though with some reservation, for Luther was a raging antisemite and a political reactionary. He was willing to challenge the power of popes, but not the power of princes.
When the poor revolted against feudalism in the 1520’s, partially inspired by his rebellion against Rome, he wrote “Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants,” which included this instruction: “let everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel.”
And smite, slay, and stab they did, with peasant deaths estimated somewhere between a hundred and three hundred thousand…
Luther’s reform was the first to have real staying power, a fact we will celebrate at the end of this month, but his idea of the two kingdoms, which separated faith from secular governance, laid the theological foundation for the Holocaust.
I have been more supportive of Luther’s contemporary, Huldrych Zwingli, the Protestant Reformer in Zurich, directly connected to our own theological trajectory as Reform and Congregational, but also not without fault. He supported Protestant Reform, and was small “d” democratic in that he operated in the Swiss system of councils and cantons, but he was an advocate of theocracy, and he might have lived a little longer if he had been a bit more pragmatic. As I have shared, he died on the battlefield. Then there was that whole murdering Anabaptists thing.
I have spent considerably less time on Jean Calvin, though he is truly the third voice so critical to our theological heritage here at the Park Church, for while Zwingli started the Swiss form of Protestantism, it was Calvin who codified it. Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and members of the German Reform movement were all expressions of what is fundamentally Calvinist Christianity.
Calvin operated in Geneva, a French-speaking Swiss canton. He was eight-years old when Luther nailed his famous Ninety-five point challenge to the door in Wittenberg, and was just barely a teen when Zwingli challenged the Lenten fast.
Like Luther and Zwingli, Calvin operated in the framework of Christian Humanism, which wasn’t entirely bad. In fact, some might accuse us of being Christian Humanists, while others believe that we aren’t even Christian.
But Christian Humanism in the Age of the Protestant Reformation believed you could think your way to an understanding of God, with help from the biblical canon studied in the original languages. This was the start of modernity, of the scientific method. Reason gave us a powerful set of tools, but also made us a little cocky, both in assuming humans were rational, and in assuming God could be clearly understood or defined. That all came unwound in the early Twentieth Century, with the quantum and post-modernity, which still freaks people out.
Calvin, for my money, was absolutely the worst of the Reformation Christian Humanists, for it is at his feet that we must lay the TULIP, which in this case is not the flower, but is the acronym for five key points in Calvinist theology. They are: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. These all boil down to some form of what we call predestination, in all of its poisonous iterations.
The key to this thinking is completely logical. God, in order to meet traditional definitions of God with a sprinkling of Greek Philosophy thrown in, must be omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, in other words, always everywhere, with complete power, and knowing everything.
This means that God must know the future. Which means God must know who will be saved. Which means God has decided who will be saved since knowing is deciding when you are all powerful. So God has predestined some people for eternal bliss, and some people for eternal torment. Which means humans have zero control over their own righteousness. We are totally depraved in that we cannot turn from our sinfulness, unless God has elected us, in which case we cannot resist God’s grace. We are literally nothing, since God determines our entire existence as if we were tiny figures in a Fisher-Price playset.
It is all perfectly logical, and perfectly abhorrent, for it makes God into a monster who creates sentient beings that are immortal, but who intends from the outset that some of those sentient beings will suffer eternally. Why? For the sake of God’s ego?
Now, you construct the belief that works for you. My job isn’t to tell you what to believe. My job is to give you the tools to construct your own belief within the context of the Park Church tradition… a living and non-credal Christianity that cares about what you do and not about dogma.
But I absolutely cannot worship the god of Calvinism. The God that I worship is as dynamic as the Creation that reflects God, evolving and complex, the setting for breathtaking beauty, never contained or predictable, neither known nor controlled. So while I might have found a tenuous faith home in another denomination, I’d never make it as a Presbyterian.
Fortunately, somewhere along the way, we abandoned Calvinism. The Rev. Thomas K. Beecher’s emphasis on a “practical Christianity” reflected a wider movement within our Congregational tradition away from creeds and dogma. Don’t tell me what you believe. Show me what you believe.
And yet, despite throwing off predestination and the monstrous god it creates, I think there is still something to be said for total depravity, just not in the clinical circular logic of Calvinism. Because, you know, I look at the news, and it is pretty clear to me that people basically suck.
We didn’t fall from some perfect state because we are not the heirs to some fig-leaf covered Adam and Eve plopped down in a mythical garden and eating a tempting fruit placed there by a co-dependent god. We evolved, and somewhere along the line, started to think of ourselves as selves, and with this self awareness came a whole lot of beauty and a whole lot of ugly.
We have constructed all religions, including our particular religion, at the intersection of our experience of the holy and of the mundane. That humans have constructed religion does not in anyway lessen the reality of that holiness, nor does it lessen the horrors we have inflicted upon one another, on other living things on this living planet, indeed… on the planet itself.
It seems fitting that the iconic image for late-stage corporate capitalism is a bull, for we have been worshipping golden bull for at least three thousand years, as we were reminded in today’s scripture.
I am particularly mindful of our depravity as I watch the news, especially the current conflict in the very region that gave birth to our religious tradition.
This week, a local social media instigator called out the Park Church generally, and me specifically, for not issuing a public statement in response to the terrorist attack in Israel. She accused us of silence due to “intersectionality,” and did not call out any other local religious communities or religious leaders.
Now, let me break that down for you. Intersectionality is the idea that people can experience multiple forms of oppression. An African-American lesbian is likely to earn less money than a man doing the same work because she is a woman, to experience systemic risk and sometimes violence because she is a person of color, and to be rejected by many people of color and her religious community because she is a lesbian. You can easily come up with dozens of other examples of intersectionality on your own, and exactly zero of them have anything to do with the violence in Palestine and Israel.
And why, exactly, should we be called out to make a public statement? I have my opinions on the conflict in the Middle East, based on my knowledge of history and my commitments to justice and an open society, but we are not a political party or a think tank. Though to be fair, Taylor Swift was also called out for not issuing a public statement, and as far as I can tell, her diplomatic experience is limited to writing songs about ex-boyfriends.
The idea of “calling out” itself is a form of bullying based on the absurd notion that everyone should have an opinion about everything, whether or not they have any knowledge or stake in the matter.
As most of you know, I was actually in lower Manhattan on 9/11, and while I was fortunate to be north of the blast zone, I certainly experienced the trauma of that day, the smell of destruction, the long walk to Queens, the months of anxiety as we heard about potential targets.
I know about the British Mandate of Palestine and the toxic vestiges of colonialism, the horrors of the Holocaust and the pursuit of a Jewish state, the atrocities committed by both sides in the current conflict. I also know that nationalists and religious extremists in Palestine and Israel will not rest until they have completely displaced or destroyed their opponents, and that fundamentalism is deadly, there and here. Which is to say arrogance is deadly, for the humble do not claim to know God’s will, much less speak it.
For the record, only the Church Council or a Congregational Meeting can speak for this church, but I did post my personal response to the terrorist attack and unfolding catastrophe. And having failed to bait me into something she could use to create hatred and division, the original poster deleted the entire thread.
Total depravity… If anything is truly omnipresent in human history, it is dumb wars and sectarian violence. People suck.
But people can also be amazing, creative and loving.
In the end, this is why I believe Calvin is wrong. We do have a choice. You have a choice. We have agency. We can choose the good, the way of life and love. Every day, in a million little ways, you have the chance to lean into the holy. For me, that takes the form of seeing God in Creation and in my neighbor, of celebrating justice, compassion, and humility, of remembering that Jesus is found, not under the spotlights in a thousand dollar suit, but at the margins, among the least of us, an ex-con, a recovering addict, even in those who are still trapped in sin.
May we have ears to hear the good news, and eyes to see the kin-dom of God, this day and always.
Amen.