An excerpt from a new book, Metropolitan Manifesto, by Rich Bledsoe.

Institutions say they want change, but this is at best a schizophrenic desire. Change requires pain and nobody wants pain.

Death and Resurrection Motif in the Bible

The entire backbone of this manifesto is the application of the biblical motif of death and resurrection to the leader’s situation. This begins with his/her survival in office, but must then have a broader application than that. Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy has understood the death and resurrection motif as the key to Western history as no one has. For the life of the Church and the Kingdom of God when things appeared to be at dead ends, over and over, it turns out to be the beginnings.

We see this pattern in the Old Testament. God brought a wicked world to an end in the flood and saved only eight people in the ark. But the end of that first world carried the promise of the rainbow with it as God promised He would never again flood the earth and made a covenant with all living things (Genesis 9:8-17).

A few generations later, He initiates a program of redemption when He calls Abraham to Himself, and promises to bless the whole earth and all peoples in Him (Genesis 12:1-3). This calling of Abraham is a calling that is over against universal judgment as He had exercised in the flood.

The family of Abraham develops for four generations, and then seventy people are called down into Egypt where eventually they are enslaved (Genesis 46:27). It is significant that seventy Hebrews go down into Egypt. Seventy is the
number of the nations, being derived from the table of nations in Genesis 10. Whenever the number seventy arises, it is symbolic of the nations.¹An example of this would be in the Gospel of Luke, which is the Gospel to the Gentiles. In Luke 9, Jesus sends out the twelve to the Jews, which number is symbolic of Israel being the nation of twelve tribes. Then in Luke 10, He sends out seventy to cities He is preparing to go to, some of which are in Gentile areas, and include Gentiles. Egypt is a fiery furnace and slavery in Egypt is a kind of death. These Hebrew people are going down into Egypt to die for the world. Their enslavement is in place of a universal judgment that would once again destroy the earth. The Exodus is a resurrection. Israel emerges from the furnace of Egypt in new life and is raised from the dead by Yahweh. Israel now proceeds to explicitly become the priestly people to the entire world.

If the death/resurrection motif is not clear in the Egyptian experience, it is made explicit in the Babylonian captivity. Return from Babylon is directly likened to a resurrection in Ezekiel 37. This passage presents a vision
of a valley of dry bones coming together, flesh coming onto the bones and breath entering the resurrected bodies. This is Israel and Israel is coming back from the dead.

Jesus literally fulfills the death and resurrection anticipated in Ezekiel 37, and the Church is baptized into His death and resurrection. The disciples are sent forth to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and they are to disciple the nations, not just individuals. Whole nations begin to take upon themselves this identity of “death and resurrection peoples” in analogous ways to Israel.

In previous chapters, we have spoken of the pattern of death and resurrection entering the life of the counselor to the king, as well as to the king himself. The hope for the leader is that his own experience of death and resurrection can become the experience of the institution he has headship over. Each institution is partaking of an era of a particular form of death and resurrection. It is in this that Rosenstock-Huessy has seen so deeply into. Hence, it is the explication of these patterns that become a way of giving orientation and hope to leaders.

Scapegoating and Cyclical Time: Hopeless and Hope

The first time I met privately with one of the leaders in our city, I said, “I am praying for you to make it in your office to seven years.” I hardly had to say another word. This person was almost as far down the road on this issue as was I. She said, “Before I came here (she named an important official in another state) X said to me, ‘When you get there, I want you to break the four year curse.’ “ Indeed, nobody had made it in this particular office for more than five years in nearly forty years. This was a very moving issue for the official. Momentarily, she appeared to be near tears. She was very touched. I then told her that her first year would be a honeymoon, the second a bit tougher and the sheen would be gone, and between the third and forth year, all hell would break loose. “If there isn’t a crisis, one will be invented. They will attempt to crucify you.” Several years later, a crisis indeed was invented. I got a call one evening, and it was the chief of staff wanting to know if I would see this person. A time was arranged, and I had a meal with her and her husband. We discussed the crisis. “How long have you been here?” She thought for a few moments. “Almost exactly three and a half years.” (This is significant, because Christ was crucified at 42 months, or 3 1/2 years into His ministry).

A number of years later, I had meeting with another person in that same office. I began by saying, “You know, you have about one more year before they come after you.” He got silent. He was a very seasoned politician in his previous life. He knew exactly what I meant. He then said three things. “You have been around here a long time, haven’t you.” It was a statement, not a question. I said, “Yes.” “You’ve seen this before, haven’t you.” Again, it was a statement. “Yes.” Then he did ask a question. “What sect are you from?” I told him my affiliation (Presbyterian). He was very silent and thoughtful, and our interview ended. I never saw him again, but he resigned a few months later. When he left, he left with a hero’s departure with the press trumpeting all that he had achieved. He had been there a little more than two years. What I knew was that he was getting out of Dodge ahead of the lynch mob that he knew was coming.

What follows in this section is not presented as a law, but as something that has typically functioned as one of the first acts of wisdom or interpretation that begins to win the king. The typical first act of wisdom in my experience has to do with a kind of prophesy regarding scapegoating and cyclical time.

This is the information that understandably has had the most immediate and often the deepest effect on almost all officials with whom I have counselled. This understanding is a combination of things that I have learned from Edwin
Friedman, Rene Girard and James Jordan.²Friedman, E. (1985), Generation to generation: family process in church and synagogue. New York, Guilford Press. Bailie, G. (1995), Violence unveiled : humanity at the crossroads. New York, Crossroad. Girard, R. (2001), I see Satan fall like lightning. Maryknoll, N.Y. Ottawa Leominster, Herefordshire, Orbis Books; Novalis; Gracewing. Jordan, J. B. (2007), The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. Powder Springs. GA, American Vision.

Time is of the utmost in importance to anyone who is appointed or elected to any given office. As often as not, the reason someone is newly appointed or elected is to bring change and resolve problems that the institution has been experiencing. This, however, is not really the case. Institutions say they want change, but this is at best a schizophrenic desire. Change requires pain and nobody wants pain. Ray Bakke has said that the first rule of all pastoral care is that all change is experienced as loss, even if it means a net gain in the long run. People want change until it means change, and then what we all want is for the same tune to be played, with the hope that this time it will be different.

The Bible is replete with numbers and many numbers have a typological content. One of the most basic numbers is the number seven. The world was created in seven days, and all through the Bible we find time being structured on sevens. Israel’s long term calendar was so structured with a weekly Sabbath every seven days, a Sabbath year every seventh year and a Jubilee year every seven times seven years. The Gospel of John is extensively structured on
sevens, as is the Book of Revelation, and Daniel prophesies about seventy weeks of years (7 X 10, Dan. 9:24).³There are seven miracles and seven discourses in the Gospel of John, and Revelation has seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls.

The number three and a half is obviously seven cut in two. We first find it employed when Elijah prays for it not to rain, and it does not rain for forty-two months, or three and a half years. Three and a half is a curse. It is a time of completion, of creation or recreation cut short or in two. (James 5:17, I Kings 18:1, Daniel 9:27, Revelation 11:2, 12:6, 13:5). Jesus was crucified at about three and a half years into His ministry. The implication is that His life was cut off or cut in two. He bore the curse for us.

When someone enters office, it will take somewhere between seven and ten years to bring meaningful renewal.⁴Rosenstock-Huessy, E. (1947), The Christian future: or the modern mind outrun. London, S.C.M. Press. Cheyeny, T. Climbing Past 400 In New Church Attendence. In our current environment, this almost never happens. Most leaders are cut off in the middle. In my experience, most leaders are effectively cut off before they have been in office for four years, and most will quit somewhere around five years. This means that renewal never takes place and that the old dysfunctions just continue. Most of our institutions are not being renewed, and at some point the dysfunction could become complete.

In order to keep renewal from being brought by the leader, the leader must be removed or have his or her effectiveness destroyed. This happens through the process of blame and scapegoating. If a crisis can be found at hand, that will do. If one cannot be immediately found, one can always be manufactured. And this will happen with the greatest intensity somewhere between three and four years, at approximately three and a half years. In other words, the leader will be crucified. If he or she can survive this time, then they can make it to seven years, and be successful in bringing renewal. In this, they virtually pass through a resurrection.

If a resurrection is not experienced, then a new leader will be brought in, usually with great fanfare, to solve the problems that the previous leader could not resolve. What has really happened is that things are just going in vicious cycles, and the same thing in all likelihood will happen to the new leader. No real renewal will happen, and further decay and degeneration will continue to plague the institution, and will probably get worse.

Capturing the Conscience of the King

This forms the background of the capturing of the conscience of the king. Since the infamous 60s, when the fervor of the French Revolution was introduced into our universities and our cities, crucifixion of some sort is now almost inevitable in all positions of leadership in the United States.⁵This is true in most parts of the country, except the Deep South and those parts termed the Bible belt, which are still more stable. But in those parts of the country, the problem is often the opposite where officials stay and stay and form a good ol’ boys’ network that is just as impervious to renewal. In my experience, almost no leader in any significant position lasts more than five years in his or her tenure. As an example, I have discovered as a result of my ministry that university presidents in this country routinely play a game of musical chairs about every four years. A deep intuitive knowledge exists, that it is impossible to survive in any presidential, or chancellor position, beyond an early era before conflict has developed. Leaving at four years is often a way of avoiding what appears to be inevitable destruction in that position. It is leaving ahead of the final and inevitable destruction and end of intolerable and impossible conflict that has by that time already been inaugurated.

My entry into many offices has been an understanding of this and speaking of this reality to the various leaders I have met. Understandably, there is hope of something better or more coming of what appears to be inevitable destructive conflict. Interest in talking with me is usually prompted by sheer self interest. People pursue these positions often for noble professional reasons, as well as sometimes, out of sheer personal ambition. Someone coming to them and speaking of an inevitable destruction of their position in office is certainly an attention getter. However, that discussion sometimes follows some kind of power encounter that has also been an attention getter. The prediction of the nightmare of coming conflict that will be utterly destructive is sometimes the first opening that the counselor has to begin to speak wisdom. Almost nobody else will broach such a subject, and, if they do, it is never broached with hope. Hope in the coming darkness is the advisor to the king’s great weapon and entrance. Who but a Christian, and particularly a Christian pastor, could better offer the hope of resurrection from the dead?

Metropolitan Manifesto: Half the world’s population now lives in cities, and that is where the Church must learn to serve. Rev. Richard Bledsoe has spent his life as a pastor to city leaders in Colorado. Over the years, he has become the unofficial bishop of his city, a recognized adviser to the king. In Metropolitan Manifesto: On Being a Counselor to the King in a Pluralistic Empire, Bledsoe lays out the theology behind his work, explains how to minister to leaders, and shares the lessons of his long experience. The Metropolitan Manifesto is an essential, inspiring testament to the transformative power of the gospel in today’s world.

“Now therefore fear the Lord (T)
and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. (H)
Put away the gods that your fathers served (E)
beyond the River and in Egypt, (O)
and serve the Lord.” (S)
Joshua 24:14

40 Years of Harlotry

Israel famously wandered in the wilderness for forty years. They were tested, offered as a sacrifice and refined with the holy fire of the Law of Moses. This “threshing” process appears at the centre of the Bible Matrix. It is pictured as the time of harvest (Pentecost – the giving of the Law), and as the burning eyes of the Lampstand watching over Israel (sun, moon and five visible planets). In the Covenant pattern it is the “Ethics,” the bit where God lays out the rules for success. Threshing is also a biblical euphemism for sexual relations. At this point, under the Lawful eyes of God, Israel is either shown to be a faithful bride or an adulteress. Is the fire of her desire true or “strange” (foreign). We can see this pattern in James 1:15. It is a sick parody of the Covenant process because it begins with a “false word.”

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]

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ART: Burning of the Golden Calf by Moses, by Robert J. Tiess, blenderartists.org

A thought-provoking post from Matthew Jepsen. (Reproduced here with permission).

Below, Lewis articulates a contemporary rendition of Augustine’s “God-shaped hole”:

Most people, if they have really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we have grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us.

- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Ch.3

I’m tracking with him here for sure, but I’ve met quite a few Christian (with whom this also resonates) that are mystified at how few people around them seem to find this sort of thing compelling. Michael Spencer discussed the same thing about six years ago in light of a London Times study on religion and youth. The relevant summary goes like this:

“Nevertheless, young people do not feel disenchanted, lost or alienated in a meaningless world. “Instead, the data indicated that they found meaning and significance in the reality of everyday life, which the popular arts helped them to understand and imbibe.” Their creed could be defined as: “This world, and all life in it, is meaningful as it is”, translated as: “There is no need to posit ultimate significance elsewhere beyond the immediate experience of everyday life.” The goal in life of young people was happiness achieved primarily through the family… The researchers were also shocked to discover little sense of sin or fear of death. Nor did they find any Freudian guilt as a result of private sensual desires. The young people were, however, afraid of growing old.”

Capon though, (to string some metaphors together), gets closer to the bone, closer to the bare metal, closer to the raw psychology behind this and in the process borrows a page out of Girard’s book (whether he knows it or not).

The untamability of romance, the endlessness of the vision of the beloved, threaten constantly to send us off in successive limitless expeditions after something that grows successively harder to define. The movie star on her fifth marriage seems always to be less clear about what she wants and less free to make her wanting serve her well. For under it all lies the endlessly expansive pride of a being who cannot add a cubit to her stature or a minute to her life. That is our dilemma: desire is endless; we are not.

-Robert Capon, Bed and Board, p.56

Romance is never ultimately satisfying, not necessarily because we have this longing for God that is mistakenly misdirected at the nearest lover (thought that can be an accurate way to describe it at times), but because our desire is alive and regenerated and unlimited. Ambition for power and success can never be satisfied because our capacity to envy will always exceed the magnitude of our own frame.

A man who drinks gets thirsty again, but Christ explicitly(!) describes what He gives as a “spring of living water welling inside” (John 7). Oughourlian argues convincingly in his Genesis of Desire that this thirst is most certainly from God, not the product of our corruption or of the devil. Adam was thirsty in Eden, and then he was satisfied by drinking water. So are we. But we cannot add one cubit to our stature. We steadily covet more than our humble (but beautiful) selves can ever contain. To be satisfied in God and to find rest in him implies, chiefly, that we no longer need what our neighbor has, or what only our creator has. In due time He wills to give us all in an ongoing and eternal fashion.

“The Left might be godless, but the Right has only the form of godliness.”

Just chucking some ideas around here, so comments are welcome (especially from actual Americans.)

From the New York Times (April 2008)

U.S. prison population dwarfs that of other nations

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners.
[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]

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]]> http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2012/06/14/lamechs-patsy/feed/ 9 http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2012/02/08/mad-men/ http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/2012/02/08/mad-men/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:24:00 +0000 http://www.bullartistry.com.au/wp/?p=8707 Atonement and Enthronement

“Jesus does what no medicine man
or witch doctor is able to do.”

And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man,
the one who had had the legion, sitting there,
clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. – Mark 5:15

Rich Bledsoe’s old blog is a goldmine. Here’s an excerpt from The Dysfunctional Family of the Gadarene Madman.

A friend of mine who is a Christian clergyman, and is from India, and has demonstrated gifts of exorcism, tells me that the power of the witch doctor is the power of being able to command lesser demons to leave by the power of a greater demon. But the demons are never banished. They just transfer place or position. In the case of this text, the demons of the village were all put on this one poor man who became a representative demoniac, and bore the pain and agony of the entire community in himself.

There are four descriptors around the demoniac that we need to look at.

First, he is chained, but in his madness is so crazed that he breaks the chains and cannot be restrained. He is the recipient of the accusations of the demons of the village. The very character of the devil is that his is “an accuser” (Revelation 12:10, Zechariah 3:1). Accusation is the most galling of all experiences, and he is accused day and night by the devils who have taken possession of him who used to accuse the community. Now along with the demons, the whole village also accuse him.

Secondly, he is naked. (Luke 8:27, Mark 5:15) This is a symbol of shame, and he thus bears the shame of the entire community.

Thirdly, the text says that he cuts himself with stones (Mark 5:5). In the Greek, the term is “autolapsis”, which literally translated means “self stoning”. In other words, the madman executes himself by stoning, which in the ancient world was a ritual form of execution. Hence, he is executed on behalf of the community as well. Finally, he lives amongst the tombs, (Mark 5:2, 5) which as a fulfillment of the other curses on him means that he is already dead. He bears death and damnation in himself for the whole rest of the community.

The demons immediately begin to beg that they not be sent out of the country, and beg instead that they might be sent into a herd of swine that are nearby. Now, this is ambiguous. The swine are in fact a mirror image of the village. There are about 2000 pigs (Mark 5:13), and in fact the demons may be begging to be allowed to re-enter the people in the village, for whom the madman is a surrogate. To the demons, the people are as unclean as the pigs, and either allows for their occupation. But Jesus mercifully does not send them back to the village people, but instead sends them into the nearby pigs, and they, driven mad by the incursion into them, rush off of a cliff and into the Sea of Galilee.

To fall into the sea is to fall into the abyss. In doing this, Jesus does what no medicine man or witch doctor is able to do. He does not just exchange one demon for another from one place to another, and that in a temporary fashion, but Jesus banishes them forever, and sends them back to the abyss.

I recommend reading the entire article, and its sequel, The Gadarene Madman and the Modern World. Bledsoe demonstrates that the relationship between the demoniac and community are exactly the kind of “triangulation” observed by Edwin Friedman to be the problem in all dysfunctional relationships, whether personal, familial, institutional or corporate.

Of course, I have to tie this to the matrix, at least its “festal” strand. The first chapters of Matthew follow the Feasts, and place this event at Atonement. [1] This means that the communal dysfunction of scapegoating (as expounded by René Girard, particularly concerning the treatment of Job by his advisors [2]) is Man’s unjust, twisted method for obtaining corporate healing without reference to the mercy of God. It replicates the reaction of Cain to God’s atoning mercy (an event which also appears at Atonement within the narrative of Genesis 4). The scapegoat in the end was not Abel, although that was Cain’s intention. Abel himself became an acceptable offering. The scapegoat was Cain himself, who could not bear his shame and so rejected the mercy of God. The community he founded was a primeval “Gadara,” and Lamech continued to deal with its demons through bloodshed. The blame shifting continued until the entire culture was cutting itself. [3] The bloodletting continued and  increased until the Great Flood.

These primeval events were similar expressions of blame-shifting. “Shifting” is the work of the witch doctor. It’s a form of “cooking the books.” Rather than take the shame and blame and be forgiven, fallen corporate Man (Greater Eve) can’t take vengeance upon historical Adam, so she finds someone else to take the rap. Of course, the time came when the Man she found to vent her fury upon, in a demonic hysteria, was her One True Husband. This led to unfathomable mercy, but also to the avenging of all the scapegoats in the history of atonement, beginning with Abel, in AD70. The Revelation tells us the story of their enthronement.

In the end, it is God who cooks the books. Jesus is the Great Medicine Man, the White Witch Doctor. But He removes our sins from us as far as the East is from the West.

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[1] See Why Jesus Healed Some.

[2] James Jordan writes:

Job is clearly some kind of king. He is the leader of his community. He is the Chief Cornerstone, while Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are his “three mighty men,” the other corners of the realm. It is because Job is the king that the other men arrive to try and force him to step down.

(The Hebrew word for “army commander” is “corner.” For other examples of chief corners and three other corners, consider David and his three mighty men, Daniel and his three friends, and Jesus with Peter, James, and John. On “corners” and “three mighty men,” see Biblical Horizons 121. Compare also Jesus with the Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate, as discussed above.)

Job as king is the “greatest of the men of the east” (Job 1:3). He employed hundreds of people and fed the poor. The disaster that overcame his household was, thus, a disaster upon the entire realm. The poor were starving, and hundreds of people were either killed or out of work. The sores on Job’s body were a sign of the lesions on the body politic of which he was the head, a point no ancient reader would miss.

This realm or political “house” has fallen because the Chief Corner, Job, has fallen. The other three corners, thus, step in to try and repair it. Their fallacy is not in seeking to restore their society, but in the way they seek to do it. Their desire is for Job to step down by admitting fault, so that one of them can replace him. God’s intention, however, is to take Job and this society through judgment and resurrection, and to reconstitute a new and better society afterwards (as happens in chapter 42).

Job’s position as king or leader of his people has been skillfully analyzed by Rene Girard in Job: The Victim of His People, translated by Yvonne Freccero and published by Stanford University Press in 1987. Despite the many flaws in this book, it makes clear that the attack upon Job came not because he was an ordinary person, but because of his preeminent position in this community, which had fallen into chaos seemingly as a result of God’s judgment upon Job, their “king.”

The book of Job, then, is not just about the sufferings of a righteous man, though it is that in part, and can be preached that way. It is also about chaos in the body politic, and the position of the suffering king within that chaos.

James B. Jordan, Was Job an Edomite King?, Biblical Horizons Newsletter No. 130.

[3] The innocent victims in our society are most obviously the unborn. But perhaps this sheds some light on the growing problem of self-harm in our culture. Biblically, we should also remember the priests of Baal on Carmel cutting themselves. Paul ties this factor to the Circumcision in the first century, those who considered it to be somehow redemptive rather than simply signal.

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