Omnivores, Camels, and Kingdoms

It was a funny moment when I realized that the word "omnivore" has the same prefix as those much-touted attributes of God: omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent. Whereas God knows all, is all, and can do all, humans consume all.
Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed comes to mind. I'm still in the process of reading it, but its basic premise is that a society's failure or success has always been (basically but not solely) dependent upon its use of natural resources. Duh, yes? Yet we as humans think that we can consume and consume and consume. We have named ourselves omnivores. We have not learned from history--from Easter Island, from the Anasazi, from the Mayans, from the Vikings, or from any other past society (especially not those small, (un)remarkable ones that have survived and thrived).
We blindly accumulate and consume at any cost, human, environmental, or otherwise.
And now the story of Jesus and the rich man (which has absolutely no relevance to you or me or any other person except maybe those billionaire CEOs and probably not even them because Jesus believes in the free market) comes to mind.
Jesus turns everything on its head in this story, all societal mores and dogmas. In a sickening (but typical) display of flattery, the rich man strides up to Jesus, kneels with a flourish (it is interesting and perhaps enlightening that the only other people that kneel before Jesus in Mark, or any other Gospel for that matter, are the Roman soldiers crucifying him, in a sickening display of mockery), and says, "Good teacher..." Now you must understand that this flattery is typical behavior in this culture, and the only proper response from the flattered was reciprocated flattery...which makes Jesus' reply more than a little awkward: "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone."
Ahem...yeah, well, um...but really, "what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Just like us, the rich man has only the self-interested question of eternal life in mind. As if his numerous earthly inheritances and possessions are not enough, he craves more, desires the ultimate inheritance. To him, Jesus is not Messiah; he has not come to overthrow the oppressive power structures, to give an inheritance to those who have none, to bring a just kingdom beginning "in this present age" (Mk 10:30). He is merely another Rabbi, another Good Teacher who holds the secrets to eternal life. This is all we can bear from God, all we care or dare to hear: "what shall we do to inherit eternal life?"
And so Jesus lists off a bunch of commandments; this and that and the other, these you must obey, all of them straight from the Scriptures except for that one that is randomly and rather unorthodoxly inserted (in typical Markan style): "Do not defraud." Do not exploit, do not cheat others economically: a commandment that would have had particular significance to the corrupt class of wealthy landowners of which our rich man was a part.
"Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth up." (The rich man fills in Jesus' blank with self-flattery.)
"One thing you lack [ironically, it is our surplus that is our lack]: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
But that's it, isn't it? That's the one thing we can't do. Just as the rich man walks away in grief, we rage against the idea that such a radical proposition might actually apply to us. "Surely Jesus was just speaking to THAT rich man. We aren't that rich [though the wealth of the poorest of the American middle class is surely beyond that rich man's wildest dreams]. Even if we are, we aren't owned by money; we don't serve Mammon." "Then give it up," Jesus says. "No! No, you see, you were talking to a different culture. Money is different now. Money is freedom. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. Everyone has equal opportunity to attain wealth; it is their responsibility, their fault if they can't. Jesus didn't mean for EVERYONE to sell all they possess and give to the poor. That's ludicrous. He was just talking to one man, don't you see?"
But notice that the selling of possessions and the giving to the poor was a prerequisite for following Jesus. Do this, "and come, follow me." Notice that the disciples (after they get over their shock at Jesus' overturning of the persistent dogma that the rich are the blessed of God) respond by asserting, "we have left everything and followed you." Notice that in Acts 2:44-47 and 4:34-35 "all who were owners of land or houses would sell them and bring the proceeds of the sales and lay them at the apostles' feet, and they would be distributed to each as any had need" (NASB). Here in Acts we see the beginning of the birth of Jesus' kingdom (now aborted), his dream of the redistribution of wealth leading to collective shalom, of an eternal Jubilee, beginning to be realized: "Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for my sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life."
This is the point: our self-denial would lead to collective affirmation. As Gandhi so famously said, "There is enough for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed."
It is time to quit dissociating ourselves from the rich man and honestly affirm that he is us, that we are the ones that cannot believe that God would ask us to give up our possessions. Indeed, our incredulity is the greatest testimony to our oneness with the rich man.
So here I am, believing this, but with no avenue to put it into action as I attempt to pry the fingers of Mammon's iron grip off of my life.
Yet I am not so lucky (or unlucky) as the rich man to be called into a practicing community. If I could only hear the words of a flesh-and-blood Jesus wrapping around my shoulders like Elijah's mantle, I too, like Elisha, would burn all I had in a glorious Jubilee bonfire for my slaves and follow in the prophetic heritage.
But where would I go? There is no Church, no practicing community that I know of issuing a call to the Kingdom. I have no one to follow.
Oh. Well, I've pegged it, haven't I? Here again I am reminded that the forsaking of possessions is a prerequisite for following Jesus. So here is the question that I attempt so desperately to mask: can I do it? Can I burn my old life and trust God for my daily bread (for the first time in my life) until the kingdom comes? Can I bloody my hands in the building of the kingdom?
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

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So since you're thinking it, and I'm thinking it, and the Powers that Be are most definitely thinking it, I'll go ahead and say it: I'm crazy, an absolute lunatic. This isn't what the Gospel is about. Not at all.
Here's what I have slammed up against in conversation: "How could everyone else, all those centuries of Christians, just be wrong?" My response: "I don't know. That scares me. So, please, prove me wrong." But--but--if this isn't what the Gospel is about--if it isn't about a revolution, if it isn't about radical self-denial and collective affirmation, if it isn't about nonviolent direct action in the face of the Powers, if it isn't about giving up all that you have and all that you have been, losing it and finding yourself, if it isn't about wrestling with the nameless god of justice, if it isn't about the Kingdom invading this world through a reckless and limitless love, if it isn't about resolutely resisting with furious and indignant love until the Powers have no choice but to crucify you, and if it isn't about the futility of death and the politics of fear when the grave has been conquered--then what the hell is it about? Going to church on Sundays? Being good and nice? Tithing? Singing uninspired songs? Feeling really good about yourself because God loves you? Telling everyone how bad they are but how much God loves them anyways (for some undefined reason) and how very badly they need Jesus to save their immaterial souls from all those nagging personal, internal infidelities? Is it about social control? Power? Imperialism? Arrogance? Hypocrisy? Violence? Blindness?
Uh, so I'm bitter. Angry. Probably a little unfair. But honestly--how does an imperial Christianity coherently read the gospels and not feel the slightest twinge of cognitive dissonance. How do we read things like, "Sell all you have and give it to the poor," or "Love your enemies," or the Beatitudes, or (skipping to Paul), "We do not wage war as the world wages war," and not feel challenged? If we actually take time to study the culture at the time of Jesus and the consequent significance of his actions that would otherwise be missed, how do we not cross the bridge to our culture and see what we must do?
I sit for hours and ponder how we got this way. How have we gotten so far from our roots in the Messianic and prophetic tradition? How did the Church get to the point where Constantine could hook it like a fish and use it for his purposes? I've read about this, so I have some answers in my mind, sure, but I'm still baffled. What use does an empire have for a blatantly anti-imperialistic gospel? (At this point I think about how funny it is that Mark co-opts the word "gospel," originally meaning a declaration of a Roman military victory, and labels his book as precisely that at its beginning (a necessarily covert action for someone living Jesus' values under Roman rule). And this is exactly what the story looks like at face value: the victory of Rome once again over a social dissident, a victory epitomized by the ever-victorious cross. But then we look deeper, and if we have eyes to see...) How has Christianity since then become the religion of both the British and American empires? How has a story about the dignity and unity of all human beings become the script for dehumanizing actions from British colonial rule to the genocide of indigenous Americans to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? It's unbelievable, mind-boggling, how blind we are, how we have not "eyes to see nor ears to hear" the simple and blatant truth of the gospel. Instead of selling our possessions, we consume more and more and more (and more) and say (with the straightest of faces), "You want to see how much God loves me? Look in my living room and my garage." Instead of loving our enemies, we send our children off to kill them and teach them to pray prayers such as, "God, help us to love our enemies, and make our aim straight and our shots sure." It is unbelievable, baffling, and I am furious because these lies are my inheritance and I have gorged myself on them.
...but, through the clattering clangor, I hear a song, and it sounds like an African American spiritual, like the rousing voices of the oppressed singing, "I ain't gonna study war no more." It sings to me about these slaves and the men who arrogantly (and in the name of the god who has none) claimed to own them. It asks me, "How does someone who is told to own nothing come to believe he can own a human being?" It is angry then, as I am, as it tell me how these slave-"owners" gave their "possessions" Bibles as a form of social control, hoping it would teach them obedience and show them their place.
And then the voice crescendos into an ironic joy as it tells me how these Bibles were their salvation, how the words within taught the oppressed that they are good and loved and worthy of liberation, how it introduced them to the freedom-fighting Messiah that is still overturning tables in our temples of oppression.
And now I know, in an uncertain and shaky sort of knowing, that no matter how bad our intentions in proclamation, the Gospel is still the Gospel for those with good ears.
And there is hope there, poking its petals up through rocky desperation.
A small hope.