Desecrations

A few days ago, a story and photos surfaced about a few members of the Israeli Defense Force who took a sledgehammer to a statue of Jesus somewhere in southern Lebanon. The incident drew immediate and widespread condemnation from a wide range of ecclesial and political figures around the world.

All were keen to distance themselves from the actions of these soldiers. Words like “outrage” and “unacceptable” and “desecration” proliferated. The IDF soldiers have since been removed from duty and sentenced to thirty days in jail. The statue has been restored. The IDF will be revisiting with its members “procedures regarding conduct with religious institutions and symbols.” I gather we are all suppopsed to rest assured that everything that could be done is being done to right this wrong.

I haven’t been able to get this story out of my head this week. I’ve been thinking about that word “desecration.” According to the dictionary, to “desecrate” something is “to treat something sacred or deeply respected in a disrespectful, damaging, or offensive way.” Well, ok, I suppose pounding on an image of Jesus with a sledgehammer would qualify. One might naturally wonder if the same levels of outrage are being expressed with respect to things going on in mosques in Lebanon (and elsewhere). I suspect not. Some desecrations are more offensive (or more politically awkward) than others. Thus has it ever been.

But even beyond the selective public outrage (which we are used to by now), the irony is of course a bit rich. Religious and political leaders are “horrified” and “outraged” and “stunned” and “saddened” and demand “immediate action” when it comes to what a few soldiers do to a statue but seem fine with soldiers doing what soldiers do to other human beings. Most of the government and religious leaders in question would at least pay lip service to the idea that human beings are “sacred” and yet don’t seem to be particularly troubled that they are being treated in “disrespectful, damaging, and offensive ways” every day of every conflict in every corner of the world.

Yes, war is war. I get it. But in the commentary around this story, it sometimes seems like an inanimate statue of Jesus is getting more moral attention than those who live and breathe and bear his image.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with someone about the messy nature of Scripture. From the process of canon formation, to copying and transmission history, to the wildly disparate and oh-so-human nature of the texts and their stubborn resistance to straightforward harmonization, what are we to make of this wild collection of documents? And how are we to imagine them as authoritative and pointing to the truth about God? It was a fascinating and engaging conversation.

This week, one of the prayerbooks I use has been daily using words from Philippians 2:

Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

In Christ, the Word of God in flesh, God emptied himself of divinity. He made himself nothing. The fancy theological term for this is kenosis. The non-fancy way of saying this is perhaps to simply say that, at least in some sense, God entrusted his fate to sinful human beings. God put himself at our mercy (and we show ourselves to be decidedly unmerciful!). And perhaps, I suggested to my conversation partner, something similar is going on in the word of God written. In scripture, at least on some level, God entrusts himself to our storytelling, our understandings, our memories and copying and processes of formalization. This is God’s way in the world.

At any rate, when I looked at those pictures of the statue of Jesus being beaten with a sledgehammer, my first thought was not, “Oh my God, what a horrible desecration.” My first thought was, “Yeah, that’s kind of God’s way in the world.” God is used to being desecrated and defaced, not least by how we treat one another. God knows what it is like to be at our (lack of) mercy.

My strong suspicion is that the Risen Christ cares very little about the fate of a statue in southern Lebanon. My deep conviction is that the Risen Christ cares a great deal about the desecrations that continue around the world every day, as the sons and daughters of God are sacrificed on the altars of our wars. Not for the first time, we show ourselves to be experts at the straining of gnats and the swallowing of camels.