In the fall of 2020, Father Richard Rohr began writing occasional letters that he called “Letters from Outside the Camp,” referring to the many usages of “outside the camp” in the Hebrew Bible. Richard suggests that such a position can support those who want to move beyond the contemporary political and religious “encampments” of our day.
We know full well that we must now avoid the temptation to become our own defended camp. We want to inhabit that ever-prophetic position “on the edge of the inside,” described by the early Israelites as “the tent of meeting outside the camp” (Exodus 33:7). Even though this tent is portable, it’s still a meeting place for “the holy,” which is always on the move and out in front of us.
In our ugly and injurious present political climate, it’s become all too easy to justify fear-filled and hateful thoughts, words, and actions, often in defense against the “other” side. We project our anxiety elsewhere and misdiagnose the real problem (the real evil), exchanging it for smaller and seemingly more manageable problems. The over-defended ego always sees, hates, and attacks in other people its own faults—the parts of ourselves that we struggle to acknowledge. Of course, we don’t want to give way on important moral issues, but this often means we also don’t want to give way on our need to be right, superior, and in control. Our deep attachment to this defended and smaller self leads us into our greatest illusions. Most of us do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.
Richard considers the wisdom that the Buddhist Heart Sutra can teach us:
The Heart Sutra (sometimes called The Heart of the Perfection of Wisdom) is considered by many to be the most succinct and profound summary of Buddhist teaching—surely it must have something to say to all of us. It ends with a mantra that is a daring proclamation of the final truth that takes our whole life to uncover and experience. It is enlightenment itself and hope itself in verbal form. It’s the ultimate liberation into Reality.
Here is the transliteration and pronunciation of the Sanskrit refrain:
Gate, gate, pāragate, pārasaṃgate, bodhi svāhā!
Ga-tay, ga-tay, para ga-tay, parasam ga-tay boh-dee svah-ha!
It means:
Gone, gone, gone all the way over, the entire community of beings has gone to the other shore, enlightenment—praise! So be it! [1]
This isn’t meant to be a morbid or tragic statement, but a joyous proclamation, in its own way similar to Christians saying “Alleluia!” at Easter. It is liberation from our grief, our losses, our sadness, and our attachments—our manufactured self. It accepts the transitory and passing nature of all things without exception, not as a sadness, but as a movement to “the other shore.” We don’t know exactly what the other shore is like, but we know it is another shore from where we now stand and not a scary abyss.
A Litany of Liberation
In yesterday’s meditation, we shared Father Richard’s reflection on the liberating wisdom of the Heart Sutra in Buddhism. [1] Rather than a morbid message, Richard encourages us to receive the refrain as a message of hope and enlightenment. We share a litany that Richard wrote inspired by that refrain:
All the centuries before me:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All the nations of the earth:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All kings, generals, and governors:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All the wars, plagues, and tragedies:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All human achievements by individuals and groups:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All sickness, sin, and error:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All our identities, roles, and titles:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All hurts, grudges, and memories of offense:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All enslavement, abuse, and torture:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All diseases, afflictions, and lifetime wounds:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All rejections, abandonments, and betrayals:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All human glory, fame, money, and reputation:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!
Our logical minds may say, “Oh, but these things continue in human memory, consciousness, and the standing stones of institutions and culture,” which is true. That is not the point this sutra is intended to communicate, however; this is ritual and religious theater, not rational philosophy. In terms of all those who preceded us, these things are indeed “Gone!” (Buddhism also uses the word “Empty!”) It takes just such a shock to encourage the ego to let go of the passing self, the false self, the relative self, the self created by circumstance, memory, and choice.
All comforts, luxuries, and pleasures:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All ideas, information, and ideology:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All image, appearance, and privacy:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All our superiority, self-assuredness, and expertise:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All human rights, ambitions, and fairness:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!All personal power, self-will, and self-control:
Gone, gone, entirely gone!
This is the spiritual art of detachment, which is not aloofness or denial, but the purifying of attachment. In our world, detachment itself can become a kind of EXODUS, an abandoning—whether forced or chosen—of the very things that give us status, make us feel secure or moral, and oftentimes that pay the bills.
We live in a time of great hostility, and we must resist the temptation to pull back from others, deny our shadow, and retreat into our own defended camps or isolated positions. This temptation is not true detachment, but rather a succumbing to the illusion of separation. True spiritual action (as opposed to reaction) demands our own ongoing transformation and a voluntary “exile,” choosing to be where the pain is, as Jesus exemplified in his great self-emptying. Rather than accusing others of sin, Jesus instead “became sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He stood in solidarity with the problem itself, and his compassion and solidarity were themselves the healing.
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Christ the Harvester
| MARK LONGHURSTMAY 4 |
The adolescent me was terrified of God. I pictured God as an unstable, but surely perfect and unquestionable, being who functioned similarly to Sauron’s eye. I’ve written about this before. I imagined God casting his piercing gaze across the world, into my heart, and there, as if glimpsing Frodo from across the wasteland of Mordor, God zeroed in on the evils within. God saw my pride, lust, and envy, and was mad. And when God was mad, punishment followed. It didn’t all make sense to my young psyche, but I knew there was hellfire and eternity at stake. With fiery, lasting torment on the line, I knew I had better shape up and confess all the misdeeds and mistakes that I knew about, as well as the ones I may have done, and the ones that I had not done yet.
This territory runs near the theological thicket of atonement theology and the ways it filtered to my emerging self: I was a sinner. God was angry at sin and all sinners deserved eternal death. Jesus died for my sins, absorbed God’s anger and punishment, and saved me from it. There are more complex ways of articulating it, but the felt sense of an angry God for me was to be afraid of God and afraid of myself. God’s love flowed somewhere in the equation, but I didn’t feel it. It was subsumed in anger.
I’ve avoided the more troubling biblical texts of divine wrath and punishment for a long while. It brought up too much, and my associations with God as Sauron’s eye prevailed. Studying the book of Revelation, though, has me facing my avoidance of the most difficult biblical texts and, oddly enough, praying with them. I can’t fully explain it, even, except that I realized several years back that I wasn’t afraid of God anymore, and that I didn’t want to be afraid of the Bible, either. If I can watch The Last of Us and its fungi-induced apocalypse and resulting zombies, I can surely read the book of Revelation.
So, here we are, readers. We squarely sit in the wrath-filled, violent part of the book. John’s apocalyptic visions cycle in sevens. We have seen seven letters sent to churches in modern-day Turkey (Revelation 2-3), and seven trumpets that symbolized God’s battle cry against the Empire and injustice (Revelation 8-10). Chapter 15 will prepare us for the seven angels pouring seven bowls of wrath, resulting in the corresponding seven plagues.
Before the bowls of wrath are poured, though, John sees several angels and gives us a vision of harvesting. First, John pictures one like the “Son of Man” (stand-in image for Christ) with a sharp sickle in his hand used to collect crops from over the earth (Revelation 14:1, 16). The “Son of Man” reaps the harvest. I don’t know about you, but that’s always been another scary image for me, akin to the Grim Reaper wielding his blade. Christ, the Grim Reaper, or maybe a Harry Potter Death Eater. But harvest is a time of profound joy and celebration in agricultural societies. At the farms I’ve known even peripherally, the harvest is an all-volunteers-welcomed time of hard work, long days, abundance (on good years), and feasting. An occasion to drink tasty beer, try out an apple or pumpkin pie recipe, and swap stories with friends and neighbors. Christ the harvester is not at heart a scary image; it’s a joyful one of bringing all friendship, mercy, kindness, peace, and justice to fruition—finally!
It’s understandable that we would be afraid, though, because the next thing John sees is a different being with another sickle, an angel who is harvesting grapes—and throwing the grapes “into the great winepress of the wrath of God” (14:20). Picturing God in a winepress is, on the one hand, a lovely, even joyful, image. A barefoot God stomps on grapes to make wine—a method of releasing grape juice before mechanical methods were available. But why does the potentially exuberant image of trampling in a winepress take such a terrifying turn, and why is it equated with God’s wrath?
Like many of its verses, this verse in Revelation reflects other metaphors from other books in the Hebrew Bible. In particular, John has in heart here a short prophetic book called Joel. In that brief, angry book, amid God rousing opposing armies’ soldiers and threatening holy war against enemies, Joel’s God says: “Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the wine press is full. The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great” (Joel 3:13). In the wine press, the Divine Warrior tramples foes in battle and stomps out injustice and evil (see, too Zechariah 10:5). But note here that, as in many places in the Hebrew Bible, God is doing the fighting—not the people. So, to place this troubling text in a hymn of a nation, say, as in the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” is a Christian nationalist total misuse: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.”
The following verse raises the violence further: “And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle.” That sounds like the third act of Ryan Coogler’s new movie “Sinners,” when the blood flows high and it’s all wooden stakes and silver bullets on deck for the battle against blood-sucking vampires! But on close examination, John is doing something fascinating with this verse, which he often does throughout Revelation: he’s undermining the violence of the Empire with the nonviolence of the Lamb/Jesus.
Here’s the logic, from an insightful, short commentary on Revelation by N.T. Wright: outside the city is a reference to “outside the city gate” in Hebrews 13:13, where Jesus is thought to have been crucified (“Let us go with him outside the camp/city gate, bearing the disgrace he bore.”) The grape trampling occurs “outside the city,” just as Jesus is crucified “outside the city.” A little later in Revelation, the Christ figure appears again, in a robe dipped in blood (19:13-16)—but it’s Christ’s blood, the Lamb’s blood. What are we to make of this?
God is angry, and blood is flowing, but it’s the blood of those killed by the Empire, not God. It’s the blood of the martyrs (Revelation 6:9-11), victims of Empire, the tortured and disappeared, the separated immigrant families, the Palestinian people suffering catastrophic violence and hunger—and it’s the blood of the Lamb-Christ himself. It’s the cup of wine that all Christians who dare follow the nonviolent Jesus are invited, no, called, to drink, “the cup of the new covenant” (Luke 22:20).
God’s wrath is still there for us to reckon with. It’s wrath against the Empire, against injustice and violence, against the abuse of power, deportations, cruelty, violence, and lies that took place in John’s time, and that are taking place in our time. And still, the psychological impact of an angry God lingers for me and many. So, is there something more complex going on in the Bible’s treatment of God’s anger than Sauron’s eye glaring at my soul? To be continued…
