Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Symbolic actions for confronting the powers

Recently, I reread all of the prophetic books of the Bible, along with the three synoptic Gospels, with the goal of writing down examples of symbolic actions which the protagonists in those books used to confront the evils of their time. In many cases, these symbolic actions were meant to communicate the coming disaster which god was supposedly planning to visit upon his people. In this article, I disregard this violent message, and focus instead on the uses of these actions to confront 21st century evils. Where a prophet meant to warn the nation of Israel that it would be subjected to slavery and abject poverty by the upcoming invasion of the Babylonian forces, I instead focus on the ways that a similar action can call attention to the violence of captivity and poverty itself. Below, I begin a series of writings which offer ideas for symbolic actions that followers of Jesus (who himself derived many of his own symbolic actions from the prophets) might use in a public square today, followed by the Biblical source of the idea in parentheses.

1. Public proclamations – I begin this list with a general idea. The prophets and Jesus used symbolic actions to accompany a message, and delivered it in a public place where it would be heard by regular people, and interpreted by those representing the powers as a threat to the status quo. Therefore, it is important that symbolic actions be used to draw attention and memory to the message of God.
However, proclamations can be given without an accompanying symbolic action. As a previous article of mine suggests, the doctrine of satisfactionary atonement, to me, is an affront to social justice and the freedom to be found in relationship with God. Therefore, proclamation could include such things as calling christian radio stations to point out the reasons why atonement interpretations of Jesus’ execution pervert the Gospel’s message of the here-and-now kingdom of God, in favor of an angry god whose sole focus is on judgment and the afterlife. On a more basic level, if someone were to stand outside their city hall and proclaim something similar to Jeremiah’s statements in chapter 7, verses 1-11, this could be very powerful.

2. A common refrain from the prophets is that God is the king of the kings, and that earthly power is a pretension (e.g. Daniel 2:21). Jesus’ “triumphal” entry into Jerusalem was a direct mocking of the claims of Caesar to be the Son of God. A combination of this message with a mocking of the pretensions of power would be very humorously communicated if, next election, we recruited voters to submit write-in votes for an inanimate object, or for a corporation. “Vote for this stick for Congress!” Or, “Vote Walmart for Senator!”

3. Wearing tattered clothes (Jeremiah 13:1-11; Baruch 4:20) – Society likes its poverty hidden. Therefore, a public witness of someone in tattered clothes, proclaiming the violence of poverty, should draw attention to this message. This can be even more powerful if groups of impoverished people gather the courage to appear in public and proclaim their worth by their very presence in the public eye. Perhaps those of us in community with the poor can have Bible studies on the lawns of government property.

4. Breaking a jug (Jeremiah 19:10) – Instead of breaking a jug in front of “the elders” and then proclaiming that god is about to smash them, use this action to talk about how poverty, racism, militarism, etc. creates brokenness.

5. “Make yourself…yokes and put them on your neck.” (Jeremiah 27:2) Such a sight would certainly create curiosity. There are many evils in our world which make us slaves to fear, death, injustice, etc. Proclaim these truths with the yoke on. (see a similar action in Ezekiel 7:23)

6. God threatens to “silence the shouts of rejoicing and mirth…in the streets of Jerusalem” in Baruch 2:23. Write up pamphlets or signs with the message you wish to convey, and wear a rag around your mouth to portray the common person’s feeling of being silenced by the powers.

7. “Overlaid with gold and silver, their tongues polished smooth by a craftsman, [the Babylonian gods] are counterfeit and have no power to speak.” (Baruch 6:7) Create an altar, and put money on it. Bow to it. Perhaps put some corporate logos of some of the biggest, most influential corporations on the front of the altar, suggesting that the worship of money has been sponsored by them.

8. Ezekiel took a brick, laid it in front of him, scratched the word “Jerusalem” on it, and then acted out a war on it, showing Jerusalem being besieged and defeated (Ezekiel 4:1-3). Consistent with my belief that God has never been the cause of poverty, war, or slavery, this could be an enactment of America’s treatment of persons at the bottom of our false hierarchies of worth.

9. “Lie down on your left side…for three hundred and ninety days…And when you have done this, lie down again, on your right side…for forty days.” (Ezekiel 4:4-6) You wouldn’t have to do this for that many days to be able to elicit an audience for the message your God has given you to proclaim.

10. Go out to the public square, and cook food on cow dung. (Ezekiel 4: 15) The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer. When will we insist that the poor have a right to what they need to survive? I’d love to use this to preach Martin Luther King’s demand of a guaranteed annual income (see MLK’s speech, “Where do we go from here?”)

11. Clap your hands and stamp your feet! (Ezekiel 6:11) If you did this all day, people would take note. Perhaps someone could write a cheer to match the clapping and stamping. I’d like to hear and see one, proclaiming that our poorest citizens are Too Big to Fail.

12. This Too Big to Fail idea could also go along with an enactment of slavery, as described in Ezekiel 7:23. Our slavery to corporations and the demons of capitalism and military might could be offset by the message of the worth of those the world has discarded.

13. Wear dark glasses and carry a cane. Proclaim the things you don’t want to see any more (poverty, racism, etc.), or expose the ways that we are blind to the truth, or blind to the ways of God, etc. (This comes from the startlingly disturbing visions recounted in Ezekiel 8-11.)

14. The references to mourning rituals in Ezekiel 24:15-18 remind me of the use of sackcloth and ashes for declaring the time of mourning publicly. Are we not in mourning for our country, for our lost opportunities, for those who have had to make compromises with “the way things are” in order to survive? Let’s go out into the public arena with our sackcloth and ashes and speak these truths.

15. In Haggai 1:6, Yahweh speaks of workers who put their wages in a bag with a hole in it. I envision a repeated ritual involving a bag with a hole, some coins, and an artistic creation depicting the greedy maws of corporate and state institutions. The coins are dropped in the bag, they slip out the hole in the bag, and land in the mouths of these faceless entities which swallow up our wealth and our livelihoods.

16. The book of Daniel is full of acts of refusal, which can be general guidelines for us to refuse to participate in anything which humiliates ourselves or our brothers and sisters. Daniel and others, sometimes accompanied by a few colleagues, commit the following acts of refusal:

a. Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego (later referred to as SMA-N) refuse to eat meat and wine ordered by the king
b. SMA-N refuse to bow down to a statue of the king (Refusing the pledge to flag? Refusing to stand for the national anthem?)
c. SMA-N sing hymns while being punished
d. Daniel prays to his God, even though it is forbidden
e. Daniel refuses to accept gifts from the king
f. Daniel’s interpretation of mene, mene, teqel and parsin on the wall is a bold affront to the authority of the foreign king – This is part of a larger message of the prophets, which is that God makes and unmakes kings (Daniel 2:21). These four words include the message that God has just ended the king’s sovereignty and put an end to it, has weighed the king in the balance and found him wanting.

We could certainly come up with a phrase which declares the same thing against our government/church/culture. This seems consistent with the early church’s declaration of Jesus as Son of God. This title was one that was used by Caesar during Jesus’ time, making the use of it for Jesus, the executed criminal a revolutionary act. What would it look like if we declared the United States as wanting? What would happen if we decided to publicly reject the authority of our government, and to declare a new kingdom to which we pledged sole allegiance? Lots of potential here.

17. In Amos 7:7, Yahweh reveals a plumb line that is intended for judging the people of Israel. Perhaps a pamphlet of some sort could be passed out, listing America’s sins, and suggesting a prayer of forgiveness? The person passing out the pamphlet could be accompanied by someone else carrying and using a plumb line on or around a symbolically important building.

18. The church itself has created rituals which could provide us with ready-made meaning. I like Walter Wink’s idea of using exorcisms to expel demonic influences where they are seen most: military complexes, banking institutions, churches, etc. Can you imagine the response if we were to perform an exorcism outside of a church???

19. Consistent with John the Baptist’s use of baptism for repentance from our cooperation with cultural paradigms of violence in Luke 3, public baptisms with liturgies that denounce social evils, express a desire to turn away from our complicity with them, and speak commitments to the values of Jesus could be used to attack nationalism, capitalism, military solutions to differences of opinion, etc.

20. Many of these ideas above are actions of denunciation against the state. However, the church has its share of evils that require direct confrontation as well. Take any of the ideas above and perform them in front of the most powerful, well-populated church in your town.

21. More generally, it is my opinion that the church’s function vis-à-vis the state should be to stand outside of it, and judge it from a higher standard. A simple step that must be made in order to move in this direction is the removal of the American flag from our sanctuaries. To be sure, the hanging of our flag in our places of worship is an affront to the God who recognizes no national boundaries. To suggest that the flag be removed will surely be met with strong resistance from parishioners. Nonetheless, the American flag is not just a piece of cloth, but a symbol of many things which are directly contradictory to the message of Jesus.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive. There are surely more examples that could be found and used as analogies. Instead, it is meant to encourage my readers to think creatively about how to plan out their own symbolic actions, using our rich Bible as a guide to courageous confrontation. Any of your own ideas are more than welcome.

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