Unshakeable Systems?!?
Photo by Pat Whelen on Unsplash
On a recent Sunday morning before church, I looked at the notes strewn across my desk. Among them was this sentence by China Mieville, A Spectre History: On the Communist Manifesto (2022) 73:
The Manifesto is clear that history is a long sequence of the upending and overturning of seemingly unshakeable systems.
In the next sentences Mieville applies this observation of Marx and Engel to capitalism:
Capitalism may be inevitable. But we have no grounds for claiming this a priori.
That is, in this judgment not even capitalism can be taken as “unshakeable. That left me a lot to think about while at church. In church we do not claim that “history” is the active agent in “overturning and upending.” Rather we say it is the Lord of history, the one we confess in Jesus of Nazareth, who in cunning, hidden, and resolved ways does the overturning amid history.
The Lord of hosts has sworn:
As I have designed, so shall it be;
and as I have planned, so it shall come to pass…
For the Lord of hosts has planned, and who will annul it?
His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back (Isaiah 14:24, 27)?
It is at this point that Christian faith goes beyond Marxian analysis. As I reflected on this claim by the church, I had the following three awarenesses press upon me.
1. The church is a custodian for “unshakeable” claims, that is, claims, not systems. Thus the two great ecumenical creeds of the church lay down the “unshakeable” Trinitarian claims of catholic faith. Or more concisely, it is the Eucharistic formulation that articulates the bottom-line certitude of gospel faith:
Christ has died,
Christ is risen,
Christ will come again.
This is not to say that these claims are uncontested in the church. The claim that “Christ is risen” causes squirming interpretation in much of the liberal church. And that he is “coming again” is a great embarrassment, as such apocalyptic anticipation is alien to much establishment church faith in its “realized eschatology.” Given these stark reservations, it is nonetheless clear that in some form, through some interpretation, these claims are elementally non-negotiable for serious faith. One cannot finally imagine the historic church moving through time in some continuous way without these several claims. We may (and do!) mumble or minimize, but they are the sine qua non for our faith.
But a second matter struck me.
2. The church, through time, has been custodian for “unshakeable” claims that elementally betray the thick mystery of the gospel. Thus the church has been and continues to be an eager custodian for patriarchy and has all too readily insisted on male authority and male domination (carried in patriarchal rhetoric and imagery) as essential to the church. In like manner the church in our society has been a willing co-conspirator in sustaining the ideology of white supremacy, so that some of the unshakeable claims of the church are simply uncritical appropriations from our distorted culture. And now, belatedly, we are able to see how much of the church continues to be custodian for unshakeable heterosexual hegemony, with only modest and grudging recognition now to the contrary. And if we may add to this roster of shame, the church willingly embraces nationalism so that in times of war the church readily signs on with the national effort in uncritical unthinking ways.
Beyond these “unshakeable” claims that contradict the gospel, we can see that when church faith is tilted to an extremity, we get distorted claims. Thus may lead, on the one hand, radical divine sovereignty, overstated to the extreme, means that human freedom will disappear into some form of “predestination.” Or conversely, when human freedom is overstated in the presence of God, the holy otherness of God becomes easily compromised so that the church settles for an accommodating God of love without acknowledgement of God’s uncompromising holiness. Such “unshakeable” claims variously give aid and comfort but represent careless and uncritical conclusions.
But then back to Marx and Engel:
3. The church is also an arena (maybe the last such arena in our town) where unshakeable systems are subject to expose and contradiction. The study that takes place in a local congregation may evoke critical awareness concerning presumed “givens” that must be kept open to question. In the prayer life of the church, our listening for the voice of the gospel God may bring to us (reveal to us) fresh awarenesses that upset our assured world. And of course, the church in its preaching ministry has an opportunity to utter the dismissal of what seems unshakeable all around us.
All of this I had in mind when it came time for the sermon on this Sunday morning. Our senior pastor, Linda, boldly exposited Jeremiah 18:1-11. In this remarkable symmetrical text, Jeremiah has God declare that divine resolve is for plucking up and tearing down and destroying—God’s unshakable resolve—is open for review if society repents. Or alternatively if God resolves to build and to plant, but that society does evil, God can reverse course. Thus even divine decree is open to revision, depending on the dialogic interaction between the God who governs and the people who answer to that God. Everything is left open for the decision-making of Israel, so that Israel gets to decide by its actions what may or may not be unshakeable in divine resolve.
Our pastor, on that Sunday, let this tormented reasoning of Jeremiah make contact with the systemic racism in our society. One might indeed judge that systemic racism is an “unshakeable system” among us that evokes divine judgment. But the prophet allows that such divine judgment might not pertain if the community “turns” from its racism. Conversely, if God does good to a society, but it persists in racism, then that positive divine resolve will be altered into devastating judgment.
Our pastor applied the matter of racism in a general way to our societal sin of racist segregation that still pertains, and dared to say that relief from divine judgment requires a societal “turning.” That is, in her rendering even systemic racism is an “unshakeable system” that is open to “upending.” After that general sketch our pastor linked the matter more specifically to white racism in our area as concerns Native Americans against whom we have historically practiced abusive segregation, even as we white Christians have done more broadly concerning Black people.
The outcome of this sermonic rendering is the sober news that plucking up and tearing down is in purview for our idolatrous society in its practice of racism. The good news, alternatively, is that there can be, instead, building and planting. That, however, depends on radical turning in attitude, policy and practice. Of course, this is simply church talk. Of course it was heard and witnessed by a quite limited number of persons. But the word had its say. It does not return “empty” (Isaiah 55:11). It is odd enough that we gather regularly to hear this “upending word” that belongs to the truth practiced by the church.
I thought, as I left church, that our pastor may suggests three enduring tasks for the church:
1. To treasure, reiterate, and interpret the “unshakeable” claim of the gospel concerning the crucified-risen One among us.
2. To critique and expose the “unshakeable” claims within the church that contradict the gospel.
3. To engage in upending the unshakeable claims and unshakeable systems that do violence to the truth given us in the One Risen and Crucified.
After the sermon, by way of completing the liturgy, we eagerly sang, “I surrender all”:
All to Jesus I surrender, all to him I freely give;
I will love and trust him, in his presence daily live.
I surrender all, I surrender all, all to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.
All to Jesus I surrender; humbly at his feet I bow,
worldly pleasures all forsaken; take me Jesus, take me now. (Refrain)
All to Jesus I surrender; make me, Savior wholly thine;
Let me feel the Holy Spirit, truly know that thou art mine. (Refrain)
All to Jesus I surrender; Lord, I give myself to thee;
fill me with thy love and power; let thy blessing fall on me. (Refrain)
All to Jesus I surrender, now I feel the sacred flame.
O the joy of full salvation! Glory, glory to his name!
I surrender all, I surrender all, I surrender all, all to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.
(“I Surrender All,” The United Methodist Hymnal 354).
Of course, it is not that easy; most likely most of us, as we sang, did not reflect much of what was to be surrendered. But that is the work of the church. We never know when a “connection” is made. That is why our pastors keep at it; and that is why we keep coming back to listen and sing again, over and over. There is so much we whites must surrender. The good news of the prophet is that we have a choice, given the dialogical readiness of the gospel God, to rechoose the “unshakeable” claim of our lives. That faith is the on-going open-ended work of “upending” and rechoosing. The news is that our faith is not frozen and fixed. It is open to fresh reading when we have courage for truth-telling and truth-living. I was glad, as is most often the case, to have been at church!
Perhaps when we do this all over again, the next time we can respond by singing the rarely sung wondrous hymn derived from Tennyson:
Strong Son of God, Immortal Love,
whom we, that have not seen thy face,
by faith, and faith alone, embrace,
believing where we cannot prove.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust;
thou madest man, he knows not why,
he thinks he was not made to die:
and thou hast made him: thou are just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
the highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
they have their day and cease to be;
they are but broken lights of thee,
and thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith; we cannot know;
for knowledge is of things we see;
and yet we trust it comes from thee,
a beam in darkness; let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
but more of reverence in us dwell;
that mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before .
-(derived from Tennyson, “In Memoriam”)
Our little systems: patriarchy, racism, heterosexual domination, nationalism, scholasticism, individualism, to name a few. Our little systems indeed! Our little systems; they have their day and cease to be!
