POWER AND POWERLESSNESS /

RIGHT AND LEFT

Lenin is supposed to have said, shortly before he died, that if he had to do his Russian revolution over again, he would have asked for ten Francises of Assisi rather than more Bolsheviks. He realized that something imposed by domination and violence from above only creates the same mirrored response from below. It is just a matter of time. He realized that the only communism that would ever be helpful to the world was the voluntary and joyous simplicity of a Francis of Assisi. (As a Franciscan, I am indeed a “communist” as we share all things equally and from a common purse.) That element of the practice of the early church (Acts 2:44) and of Jesus (John 13:29) was never taught with any great seriousness. It was never expected of the clergy—certainly not of the higher clergy—and therefore why would we, or could we, ask it of the rest of the church? Jesus was training the leaders, because you can only ask of others what you yourselves have done first. He was initiating them as spiritual elders, much more than ordaining them as “priests” (which is an Old Testament word never used for his apostles).

Once we saw the clerical state as a place of advancement instead of downward mobility, once ordination was not a form of initiation but a continuation of patriarchal patterns, the authentic preaching of the Gospel became the exception rather than the norm—whether Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant. The first human “demon” that normally needs to be exposed is the human addiction to power, prestige, and possessions. These tend to pollute everything.

Once we preach the true Gospel, I doubt if we are going to fill the churches.

Adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand, pp. 95-96

Prayer:

I am powerless without You.

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If we look at history, I think we can see a constant swinging back and forth between two poles, Right and Left, representing two necessary values. Those two necessary values have something to do with the first task of life and the second task of life, but they also need and feed one another.

The first value seeks order, certitude, clarity and control. It is the best way to start. But whenever that pattern is in place for too long or is too overbearing, what will eventually emerge is a critical alternate consciousness. Whenever the law-and-order thing is overdone, another group of people will react against it. Once you have an establishment, you will eventually have a dis-establishment. When some have all the power, those who don’t have power ask very different questions, and the pendulum swings back again—eventually. That has been the story of most of history and the sequencing of most revolutions. It is understandable and predictable, although the extremism on both sides could be avoided if we had more initiated elders who held the midd le.

Adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand, pp. 96-97

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It is interesting that these two different powers took the words Right andLeft from the Estates-General in France, where on the right of the throne sat the nobility and the clergy (what were the clergy doing over there?) and on the left sat the peasants and 90 percent of the population. Those are now commonly used terms in the global political world. The Right is normally concerned with maintaining some status quo, stability, continuity, and authority; that is a legitimate need and without it you have chaos. Those on the Right are normally considered innocent until proven guilty.

Those on the Left are presumed, for some reason, to be guilty until proven innocent, at least in the minds of many. (Note how even the Vatican goes to great length to reconcile “heretics” on the Right, but never the opposite.) The powers that be have tended to write history from the side of authority and power, and those who protect it. Once we see this, we wonder why we never saw it before. But some form of the Right is necessary for authority and continuity in a culture, and some form of the Left is necessary for truth and reform in a culture. And thus the pendulum swings, and I guess we all hope we are living at the appropriate time when it is swinging toward our preferred side.

Adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand, p. 97

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In the biblical tradition, the power on the Right and the power on the Left are symbolized by the kings and the prophets, respectively. There is almost a necessary tension and even opposition between them. There is only one time in all the Hebrew Scriptures that those two ever made friends, and then only barely. That is when David the King accepted the critique of Nathan the prophet, after Nathan accused him of his sinfulness and David had the humility to say that he was correct: “I have sinned against the Lord” (see 2 Samuel 12).

The Right always considers itself the product of rationality, experience and civilization. The people on the Left are always the product of these “silly” people’s movements arising out of high-minded ideology, unbearable injustices, or both. Neither of these currents is totally rational (even the Supreme Court disagrees on what is rational). Movements from the Left are normally not well-planned at the beginning. They are intuitive and come from what is suffered by the little people, who at that point are of no account and have no press or status. Thus they rely on symbols, songs, slogans, and momentary charismatic leaders to get off the ground. Remember when white people laughed at black people for singing, “We Shall Overcome”? Today we can remember those naive English colonists on the East Coast of America who said “No taxation without representation.” The pattern is always the same: “kings” (power) versus “prophets” (truth).

Adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand, pp. 97-98

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The point that must be remembered is that most of political and church history has been controlled and written by people on the Right because they are normally the people in control. One of the few subversive texts in history, believe it or not, is the Bible. The Bible is a most extraordinary text because again and again it legitimates not the people on the top, but invariably the people on the bottom—from Abraham to Moses to Jeremiah to Job to John the Baptist to Jesus.

After a while you might get tired of the rejected son, the younger son, the barren woman, the sinner, the outsider always being the chosen one of God! It is the biblical pattern—which we prefer not to see. It takes away our power to exclude “the least of the brothers and sisters” because that is precisely where Jesus says he is to be found (Matthew 25:40)! If indeed women, blacks, other religions, gays, and other “outsiders” are “least” in our definition, it seems that gives them in fact a privileged and revelatory position! They are not to be excluded, but honored. Jesus takes away from us any possibility of creating any class system or any punitive notion of religion. Unfortunately, thus far, it has not worked very well.

Adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand, pp. 98-99

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Except for the Bible itself, it took until the second half of the twentieth century for the Left to begin to have a wide, public and legitimate voice. I do not think that is an overstatement. In any swing of the pendulum in the direction of justice, the masses, the bottom, were always considered subversive and traitorous, up until the last century. Why not, when even the church was looking down from the top and the Bible had been made into establishment literature—which it clearly is not. The Bible affirms law, authority, and tradition, as most writings in most of history have done, but then it does something beyond and more: it affirms reform, change, and the voiceless—and makes them even stronger. This is what makes the Bible an inspired book. It affirms both sides, but against the usual pattern it also affirms the currents of change, reform, the poor, and justice.

The Biblical bias toward the bottom has been called by some “the preferential option for the poor.” But it is an option, an invitation: it is a grace, and it emerges from inner freedom—or else it would not be from God. In the last analysis, the Bible is biased; it takes the side of the rejected ones, the abandoned ones, the barren women, and the ones who have been excluded, tortured, and kept outside. This is all summed up in Jesus’ ministry: look at those he clearly prefers, heals, and includes—without rejecting the people of power on the Right, but clearly critiquing them.

Adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand, pp. 99-100

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Why does the Bible, and why does Jesus, tell us to care for the poor and the outsider? It is because we all need to stand in that position for our own conversion. We each need to stand under the mercy of God, the forgiveness of God, and the grace of God—to understand the very nature of reality. When we are too smug and content, then grace and mercy have no meaning—and God has no meaning. Forgiveness is not even desired. When we have pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps, religion is always corrupted because it doesn’t understand the mystery of how divine life is transferred, how people change, and how life flows. It has been said by others that religion is largely filled with people who are afraid of hell, and spirituality is for people who have gone through hell.

Jesus is always on the side of the crucified ones. He is not loyal to one religion, or this or that group, or the “worthy” ones—Jesus is loyal to suffering itself, wherever it is. He is just as loyal to the suffering of Iraqis or Afghanis as he is to the suffering of Americans. He is just as loyal to an oppressed gay man as he is to an oppressed married woman. We do not like that! He grabs all of our self-created boundaries away from us, and suddenly all we have is a free fall into the arms of God, who is our only and solid security. This seems to be God’s very surprising agenda, if I am to believe the Bible.

Adapted from A Lever and a Place to Stand, pp. 100-101