Pillars of the
Church, Tombs of the Prophets
Readings:
Amos 7:12-17; Luke 11:47-48; Galatians 2:1-14
It has been a while
since I was with you. I missed you all. This week just past I was visiting
my mother in North Carolina. There I attended my old church, St. Stephen's
Episcopal Church. The week before that I attended no church service but
was in Chicago on churchly affairs nonetheless. As I think you know, I was
there to meet with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the Unitarian
Universalist Association.
I had been preparing
for a year and a half for that meeting. It was to determine whether they
would accept my ministerial credentials and welcome me into the UU
ministry. They did not. Instead, they gave me a new list of conditions,
which as it happens, I have no intention of fulfilling. I am done jumping
through hoops. I will admit I was stunned at the decision of the
committee, though in many ways not surprised.
In what follows I
want to share with you some biblical insights relevant to the issue. If
you are tempted to take it as self-serving sour grapes, you may be right.
And yet I cannot help reflecting theologically on the matter.
Sometimes biblical
texts give the lie to the very context in which we find them, namely in a
canon of institutionally approved scriptures. If one looks close enough
one finds that the text argues against the very assumptions to which it
owes its presence in such a book. Like one single student in a graduation
photo sticking his tongue out. The passage I have chosen from Amos is such
a renegade text.
The scene is a
showdown between Amos, a self-appointed prophet, as we might deem him, and
Amaziah, an official prophet of the royal court of Israel. He had all the
prophetic credentials one might ask, not to mention an official post in
the government. The trouble is that Amos, a loud-mouthed upstart and an
outsider from Judah, has been appearing in public, on a soap-box, so to
speak, railing against the government, its foreign policy, and its
official worship. It is all a sham, he says, and for that reason an
abomination in the sight of Yahveh. God, it seems, is ever the outsider,
ever the lone wolf like Amos himself. Or at least Amos cannot help seeing
him that way. Maybe Amos was just talking sour grapes, too.
Amaziah tries to
shoo his unlettered rival away. What business has Amos, with no prophetic
ID card, no official sanction, in declaring the Word of Yahveh, especially
since it made the state and the state church look bad?
How, you might ask,
could Amaziah be so sure Amos was wrong? Simply this: he had to be
wrong. By definition a true prophecy was one that toed the party line. You
see, prophecy was an institution. The court prophets were a group of
oracles whose job it was, ostensibly, to advise the king in light of God's
wisdom. But the Bible itself makes clear that prophethood had degenerated
into a group of well-paid yes-men who were supposed to pronounce God's
blessing on any plan the king might float. Prophecy was the party line.
Amaziah followed that line well. Amos called its bluff. No wonder he
didn't have credentials. He wouldn't play the game.
The prophets were
simply the embodiment of the divine right of kings, living proof, as it
were. In modern terms we would call them spin doctors. You know, the
political handlers who talk to the media after every debate and assure
them that an obvious defeat for their man was really a victory if you see
it their way. Press secretaries who defend the President's policies no
matter how they look. Reporters ask them for a candid opinion, but it is
their job never to give one. It is all PR.
Here is one problem
I have with ministry and with ministers, and with being a good minister. I
am not a good party hack, not a good representative of any institution,
not a good front man. I speak for myself, not for a church. And since
congregants assume it is my job to speak for them, I disappoint them. I do
not have the glad-handing demeanor of a PR representative. I do not see
church as an infomercial. If someone wants pleasant assurances, they are
not going to get them from yours truly. I will encourage, exhort,
admonish--but I do not believe in a comfortable theology that can be sold
like a product.
I have no interest
in the denomination which sponsors a particular church. It is my belief
that, as Nietzsche and Ayn Rand said, it is mediocrity that huddles
together and finds strength in numbers--like the Lilliputians did. I don't
want to have to sell the next program that comes down the pipe from
denominational HQ, as if I were a McDonald's franchise owner told to push
McRib sandwiches this month. To hell with that.
Notice that Amaziah
tells Amos he'd better stop badmouthing Bethel, because after all, it's
the king's own chapel. Significant choice of words. You know the
difference between a chaplain and a prophet? Jim Wallis is good on this in
his book Agenda for Biblical People. A chaplain is a clergyman
retained by an institution to perform religious functions for them. Billy
Graham praying at the Inauguration, Tom Skinner praying at a football
game. That sort of thing. A chaplain is the functionary of the institution
that pays him. Just like Amaziah.
And there is no
problem with this as long as there is no question of speaking the truth.
There are plenty of aspects of religion that are ceremonial, ornamental,
aesthetic. And a chaplain does these things quite properly. But the
trouble comes when the minister is told to prophesy, i.e., speak the truth
as he or she sees it, and yet is really expected to speak the comforting
affirmations of a chaplain. This is going to mean that sooner or later the
preacher is going to say things that make the congregation, or at least
the major shareholders in it, mighty nervous, and then it's time for a
search committee.
Don't you see? It
has to happen sooner or later. An institution has the right to have a
party line and to require a paid spokesman to mouth it. You're not going
to hear Ed McMahon admitting that he is fronting for an insurance scam. To
hear Bill Cosby say Polaroid is really better than Kodak.
And if you gather a
group of free thinkers who will allow a preacher to speak his mind, people
who want no party line--what's going to happen? You're going to have a
loose collection of individualists (which is what you want) who will
gradually drift away. They will shun the responsibilities of making an
institution and keeping it going. And they are right! Many of us have seen
the institution of a church become an albatross around our necks till the
congregation exists simply as the maintenance crew for the institution. We
don't want that, so instead we want to travel light. But there will be no
future to such a group.
I think that's OK.
Emerson's followers formed a group of free thought churches, but none of
them survived his death. Many Unitarians dropped out of the American
Unitarian Association because they thought it was getting too restrictive,
too institutionalized. And they were right: dissention was being squelched
to form a united front. So the dissidents withdrew to form the Free
Religion Association. It rapidly became completely impotent. Any attempt
at agreement for common action chafed this or that member, so they
remained a debating society and finally died out. Meanwhile, the Unitarian
denomination remains.
But it remains as an
institution. It is not uncommon today to hear UUs like the historian
Conrad Wright putting down Emerson as some kind of adolescent trouble
maker and exalting instead the conservative institution builder Henry
Whitney Bellows, who strong-armed the denomination into being.
I say I think there
is no irony in a short-lived collection of free-thinking religionists who
eventually go their own ways enriched by their common experience. This was
what I promoted at First Baptist, and it was no wonder the church never
grew. New members would come, but they were pilgrims, searchers, like you.
And inevitably they would continue their search--elsewhere! Of course! The
whole idea was freedom!
But this simply did
not serve the purposes of the institution we had. Various church
bureaucrats complained that we had to fill those pews to get new
bureaucrats and new funds! And we should spend our efforts getting the
sort of members who would settle down in a church and shoulder those
responsibilities: young families with children. It all came down to
marketing. It always does in an institution. It has to.
But however
understandable, even inevitable it may be, it is nonetheless insidious. It
leads to ironies and hypocrisies such as Jesus condemns in Luke's text.
Religious institutions venerate the prophets of the dead past, the ones
who can no longer speak inconvenient and embarrassing things. And the old
things they said? Well, they can be de-fused with the proper exegesis. But
let any new prophet say what the old ones said and he will share the same
fate as the old ones. "Blessed are you when all men speak ill of you and
cast out your name as evil for the sake of the Son of Man, for so they
treated the prophets who were before you."
Again, what would
you expect? Are you naive enough to believe that an institution can take
seriously what the prophet says and survive as an institution? I used to
be so naive, I admit. A group that does take it seriously will not long
survive as a group! And that's the way it must be! The church of seekers
must be ephemeral. If it becomes permanent it fossilizes. When it comes to
its natural end there is nothing to regret; nothing has gone wrong. As
Thomas Jefferson said, each generation must have its own revolution. This
is no less true spiritually. Let the truth of the spirit be discovered
again and again, whether discovered in an old book or not, it doesn't
matter. Each new seeker has to see it for himself; you can't inherit it.
Jesus points out the
irony of those undertakers of the prophets who venerate their safely
silent corpses. "You who erect the tombs of the prophets! You say you
would never have killed them? Then tell me why you're building that new
one over there?" Maybe that's the point of the business about Joseph of
Arimathea burying Jesus in a brand new tomb: it was just waiting for him,
since it was only a matter of time.
And the same is true
in UUism. I follow the practice of referring to the denomination by that
institutional abbreviation, just like the CIA, the FBI, instead of using
the complete form "Unitarian Universalism," because I cannot see the
family resemblance to the great traditions of sectarian dissent, the
Unitarians and the Universalists, from whom they claim descent. In my
opinion, what we see here is but another example of building your
religious Pentagon, your Vatican, on the holy ground of prophets' tombs.
Tell me, how can it
be that in our day UUs can damn Emerson and Jefferson with faint praise
while exalting gray bureaucrats like Henry Whitney Bellows and Frederick
May Eliot? You know the joke that Jesus could never be accepted as a
member of a Baptist church? I fear for the prospects of Emerson or Thoreau
or Kenneth Patton in today's UU churches, should they make the attempt to
join. Would they have made an adequate annual pledge? Would they have been
good team players? I doubt it, and what's more, if they had been, history
would never have preserved their names.
Which finally brings
us to Paul and his encounter with the so-called "Pillars," James, John,
and Peter. This is the text with which I really identify.
Let me draw a
contrast between the great Apostle to the Gentiles and the satraps of
Jesus in the Holy City Jerusalem, the home office. Liberal Protestants
like to call Paul the Second Founder of Christianity. We say that he
transformed the religion of Jesus, a simple moral piety, into a dogmatic
religion about Jesus. Wrede said this, so did Harnack, and recently it has
been revived by Jewish New Testament scholar Hyam Maccoby. I think it is
correct. But it doesn't mean Paul was a villain. It doesn't mean that,
even if we disagree with what he taught.
You see, what this
means is that Paul was like Jesus: an original thinker, a charismatic
religious genius. For him Jesus was no longer a human being. He had
already become a god. And that meant Paul was to his Christ as Jesus of
Nazareth had been to his Father. Like Jesus, Paul was a radical, a lone
wolf, a loose canon. Not an organization man. He struck out in a new
direction, his own direction.
What about James,
John, and Peter? Here are mere names. What shadowy existence they went on
to have in early Christianity was simply as--you guessed it--symbolic
figureheads for religious institutions, James as the founder of Ebionite
Jewish Christianity and Peter as the pedigree of the Roman popes. And
John? The big name affixed to the fourth gospel to give it legitimacy when
some thought it was a piece of Gnostic blasphemy penned by Cerinthus!
Look at the titles
of these three, James, John, and Peter. James and John are called "the
Pillars." This is a mythic/cosmic allusion, referring to the great pillars
holding up the vault of heaven. The pillars of heaven are frequently
mentioned in the Bible. The two pillars in Solomon's temple, Boaz and
Jachin, were meant to represent them, just as the Temple itself, like all
ancient temples, was supposed to be a microcosm of the universe as they
pictured it. In fact, this is most likely what "Boanerges" means, the
epithet given to James and John in Mark's gospel.
Peter is also called
Cephas, the Rock. This is supposed to represent the great foundation stone
of the cosmos, on which, again, the Jerusalem Temple, as a copy of the
world, was supposed to rest. And what is the significance of Simon Peter
being the cosmic Rock? "You are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my
church. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, so that
whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose
on earth shall be loosed in heaven." This was not lost on the popes. The
whole point of James, John, and Peter being the Pillars and the Foundation
Stone was to guarantee their institutional authority.
And with this, Paul
was destined to collide, just as Jesus collided with the authorities of
his day. In 1 Corinthians Paul is already fending off Peter's claim to be
the foundation stone of the church. He says that no one can possibly lay
another foundation than that of Christ himself.
But one day Paul
finds it advisable to go to the home office and try to gain the
recognition of the Pillars. It will save him some needless friction if he
can get their blessing. If he can get them to accept his credentials. And
it works. He is glad to accept the one condition they place on him--to
gather a relief fund for the Jerusalem church. He is faithful in carrying
out the mission, as you can see in several of his letters.
Then imagine his
shock when in Antioch the whole thing blows up in his face. Peter visits
and circulates freely among Paul's Gentile converts. They don't keep
kosher? What of it! If Paul told them they didn't have to, Peter's not
going to undermine him. But then some representatives of James appear, and
Peter changes his tune! He seems to realize that the Pillars do not really
look at Paul as a legitimate colleague at all, and so he falls in line
with James' party line and tells the Gentiles that, on second thought,
they'd better adopt Jewish customs, do it the way the Pillars do it--and
to hell with Paul. Paul charges him with hypocrisy on the spot.
One wonders whether
Peter at that moment found himself experiencing a bit of deja vu. Didn't
he used to hear Jesus say such things to the scribes? Back then, in
Galilee, Peter cheered him on. And yet now here he is--on the receiving
end!
And indeed we may
ask what on earth could have happened to bring Peter to such a point!?
I'll tell you: he had become one of the custodians of an institution,
that's what! He no longer had the freedom to tell the emperor that he had
no clothes on! He no longer had the luxury of speaking his mind! He had
become the very sort of nameless functionary whose nervous scrupulosity
about the rules Jesus used to lampoon! What is the scripture of the
churches today? The Bible? Sorry, not even close! Try Roberts' Rules of
Order. That's the holy Torah.
Any New Testament
scholar will tell you Jesus never meant to found a church, and it was no
accident! A church, an institution, could never have kept his insights,
his truth alive! An institution can ever only become a mausoleum for a
suffocated truth. Peter, James, and John were Pillars of the church. But
by the same token, in the very same moment, they were also the builders of
the tomb of the prophet Jesus.
Nietzsche explained
why it happens: the Superman transvaluates the values of his day, but the
mass, the herd, cannot live for long on that exalted mount of
transfiguration. The atmosphere is just too rare. So the first thought of
the disciples, the followers, is to build a tabernacle, a shrine, for the
prophet atop the mountain, a tomb for his truth, and then to descend the
hillside as quickly as possible! And then it's business as usual.
Roberts' Rules, full speed ahead.
Abraham Maslow (in
Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences) sees it in terms of
prophets like Isaiah, the Buddha, Jesus, being "peakers," people with peak
experiences of revelation or enlightenment, ecstasy in which they are
lifted outside the limits of their selfhood. But one cannot pass this
experience on to others. They must find it for themselves. And they don't
want to. The mass who follow the prophetic peaker will only admire the
prophet's experience from afar. Soon they will be saying they could never
experience it. And then they will say that the prophet was a saviour, that
because he had the peak experience we need not try to have it for
ourselves. It would be presumptuous to try!
It is what Weber
called "the routinization of charisma." The original power of the prophet,
after he dies, becomes channeled into routine, institutional structures,
administered in the form of sacraments by duly appointed, certified
representatives. And no one notices that it has long since drained away.
We retain the form of religion while denying the power thereof.
And then we get to
the jest of Kierkegaard, and the joke is on us: "Imagine a man who
preaches that the teacher of truth can have no disciples--and immediately
50 men apply to preach his doctrine in his name!" Isn't that precisely
where we got Christianity and all the other religions? Built on the bones
of the prophets.
Institutions
survive, but what are they surviving for? One cannot pass down peak
experiences or prophecy. It is useless to expect those trained as ship's
captains to rock the boat. They can only be obedient crewmen, maybe galley
slaves.
The events of the
past year, both at First Baptist Church and with the UUA's Ministerial
Fellowship Committee, have made something clear to me. Believe it or not,
I have not simply grown defensive. I have to admit that too many people
are professing to see me as the emperor with no clothes. I can no longer
pretend they are all wrong. And this morning I have given the reasons that
I think, that I hope, underlie this perception. I am just not cut out to
be a parish minister. I can teach, preach, exhort. I can try to be
Socratic and get you to reopen old questions, to make up your own minds.
But then Socrates never founded a school of philosophy, did he? No more
than Jesus ever founded a church. If I want to follow in their footsteps,
it's time for me to recognize that I have to walk where they
walked--outside the institutional structure. I am done seeking the
pastorate. Where I am allowed to teach and to provoke, I will gratefully
accept the opportunity. Thank you.
--Robert M. Price
May, 1995
Copyright©2005 by Robert
M Price
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