One of the unique relationships I have had was with two sisters who lived in St. Joseph, Missouri. They used to live near my hometown and one dated a family friend who became an evangelical Christian. They were both avowed atheists.
And we became quick and easy friends because I’m down for taking a hard look at the Church and Christianity and saying either, “Tear the whole thing down,” or “We need to do and be better,” or “That’s a part of the tradition but not the tradition that operated from below.” (History is the tale of the winners and it is too often true in Christianity.) I am sure there are other responses.
But ironically, they “de-friended” me on Facebook because I turned that same microscope on our country’s foreign policy. They would have none of it. They referenced me as a “traitor” and “un-American.”
As a Christian pastor, critiquing US foreign policy, every time I do it, I’m picking a fight. And I have to be ready for the blowback that happens when I speak on behalf of other people and their right to be human beings and their right to claim sovereignty and their right to even exist.
We have to own Henry Kissinger’s legacy. It is our legacy.
I don’t know what I’m going to do for worship on the First Sunday in Advent. Because Advent hearkens back to those Hebrew Scripture passages of a people in Exile, coming out of Exile, or trying to figure out how to rebuild after Exile.
Advent reflects on the Roman occupation of the Jewish people in rural Galilee and the holy city of Jerusalem. To make meaning of that occupation, Jews end up with many and varied responses. Yes, some in the Jewish aristocracy choose collaboration with the occupation. But the overwhelming response is resistance to occupation.
And the Romans don’t go easy on the Jews for this resistance. In one of James Carroll’s books, he estimated that the Romans crucified 1.1 million Jews. I grew up thinking that the Gospels were written because Jesus was exceptional. As more and more of the history emerges, I recognize that telling the story of Jesus was one way to tell the story of the Jewish people under Roman occupation.
Demon possession was a physiological manifestation of occupation. In Freire’s terms, the one possessed “houses” the oppressor.
Kissinger’s legacy, using the war machine my country created, was and is demonic. And if we don’t find a way to repent for it, Mary of Nazareth will rightly be asking for us to be torn from our thrones so that her people might live freely in Palestine, in Guatemala, in and around COP City.
Not sure that will preach. But it’s the truth. And I hope I have the courage to say it.