This article is the first of two excerpts from A Simplicity of Faith: My Experience in Mourning. The book, published by Abingdon in 1982, describes Stringfellow's experience and reflections after the death of Anthony Towne in January, 1980.
Has God abandoned the Church?
The metamorphosis through which the Church is secularized is the same as that by which the gospel is rendered religious. When all is said and done, both aspects of this remarkable change are rooted in denial of the viability of the Word of God in this world. The pioneer Christians were not insulated either from the temptation to conform, as the Church, to the prevailing culture and regime in society, or from emulating the practice of religion, as the New Testament amply verifies. Still, by the time of the Constantinian Arrangement the secularization of the Church and the religionizing of the gospel became dominant in Christendom in the West. Soren Kierkegaard was, much later, to use the name Christendom to distinguish the worldly conformance of the Church and the religious corruption of the gospel from the freedom characteristic of the company of confessing Christians living in the world in reliance upon the militance of the Word of God. And, only recently, we have heard the testimony concerning the biblical integrity of religionless Christianity from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. My old friend Jacques Ellul is a companion in this witness. Among a host of others, so was Anthony Towne.
I was therefore really not surprised to find among Anthony's papers after his death a correspondence which he had had during the last couple of years with Frederick Beldon, who was Bishop of Rhode Island during the period these letters were being exchanged. Bishop Beldon died only shortly before Anthony did, in the midst at the correspondence, but one imagines that they have continued their dialogue elsewhere. The focus of the letters is upon the current separation of faith and Church. Anthony questions whether, if one has faith, one can conscientiously belong to a church like the Episcopal Church, with its pretentious regalia of decadence. He suggests that, people of biblical faith are consigned, in this day, in this culture, to extemporizing the Church from day to day in the circumstances in which they find themselves--in various households, in prison cells, on the streets, among the sick or the poor or the outcast and, for that matter, on islands. Bishop Beldon is, in his contributions to the dialogue, not defensive about the Episcopal Church and, in fact, he is disarming, for he sees the renewal of the Church happening, with great vigor and diversity, in the world and hopes that, with all its admitted worldliness, the Episcopal Church will also know renewal now and then, here and there.
The issue underscoring the Towne-Beldon letters, if put more sharply than either poet or bishop did, is the question of abandonment: is the present apostasy of the Episcopal Church (and the similar churches of the establishment) such that it can be discerned that God has abandoned the Church?
If the question sounds strange in our ears, it is because American Christendom is so complacent concerning the behavior of the Word of God. We suppose that God is indefinitely patient. And we construe this as a license for infidelity to the Word of God. Then we succumb to the temptation to so identify the Church with God that we act as if the Church is God. That idolatry of the Church is the most incongruous and absurd form of apostasy.
I have no doubt that God is duly patient, but there is no scriptural basis for the notion that his patience is inexhaustible. On the contrary, as soon as the office of God in Judgment is affirmed, it has been acknowledged that the patience of God is not indefinite. And so, in the biblical witness, there is emphatic mention of the anger of God, the wrath of God, the vindication of God, the vengeance of God. More than that, the very event of Jesus Christ in history discloses the impatience of God with the infidelity of the professed people of God. God does not foreswear God's own initiative in common history merely because of the apostasy of the ecclesiastical principalities which profess relationship with God. After the account of Pentecost, the New Testament is redundant in its warnings to the new congregations concerning the impatience of the Word of God as they become tempted by vainglory, religion, idolatry, conformity and similar dissipations. Today we remain privy to those same admonitions.
A song of hope
The issue of abandonment is no esoteric theological matter. It is preeminently an existential question which commonly plagues persons at the time of death and which was uttered by Jesus himself from the Cross.
When I was an adolescent, precocious as I may then have been, the mystery of the Incarnation much exercised my mind. At the time in life when (I suppose) I should have been obsessed with football, sex or pop music, as my peers seemed to be, I was very bothered about the identity of Jesus--preoccupied by issues of who he was and who he is--particularly by the matter of the relationship in Jesus Christ of humanity and deity.
I do not know--yet--how to account for this preemptive, and passionate, curiosity which disrupted my youth. I had not been treated in my upbringing, in either family or church, to sectarian stereotypes of Jesus as chum or sentimental intimate. Indeed, I regarded these as vulgar, possibly perverse, and certainly pretentious familiarities, denigrating to Jesus, even though they often induced for the indulgent ecstasies equivalent to a high attained through alcohol or drugs. I had suffered, instead, prosaic indoctrinations which asserted the "humanity of Jesus" while simultaneously alleging the "divinity of Christ." Such instructions had left me with a strong impression that Jesus was an extraordinary schizophrenic. Meanwhile, adoptionist notions which I heard rumored I rejected as probable sophistry since they seemed impotent to dispel the essential incoherence of dogma. In the congregation I received comfort from the introit of The Gospel According to John, which was recited at the end of every Eucharist, because that seemed to affirm the integrity--and indivisibility--of the life of the Word of God in this world and to do so in appropriate syntax (see John 1:1-14).
Perennially this concern of mine would find focus in the reports in the gospels of the Crucifixion of Jesus, especially the reference to his cry: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34; cf. Matthew 27:46). Oh dreadful words! Ghastly question! Pathetic lament! Ultimate despair! Exquisite agony! This is Jesus crying out. Why would Jesus speak this way? How could Jesus do so?
My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me
and art so far from saving me,
from heeding my groans?
O my God, I cry in the day-time
but thou dost not answer,
in the night I cry but get no respite.
(Psalm 22:1-2)
Then one Good Friday, while I was still in high school, I heard a preacher, more edifying for the laity than others had been, remark that these words of Jesus from the Cross were the opening verse of Psalm 22. Later that same day I read the Twenty-second Psalm--perhaps a hundred times--but it did not quiet my agitation. I still had all my questions, though, I recall, the effort distilled them: Why had not Jesus begun the recital of the Twenty-third Psalm, rather than the Twenty-second (like, I thought to myself, more or less everybody else does at the moment of death)?
And yet thou art enthroned in holiness,
thou art he whose praises Israel sings.
In thee our fathers put their trust;
they trusted, and thou didst rescue them.
Unto thee they cried and were delivered;
in thee they trusted and were not put to shame.
(Psalm 22:3-5)
It was some time after I had exhausted my adolescence when I began to hear the Twenty-second Psalm as a hymn of eschatological hope, rather than a dirge of ultimate despair. If it is concluded that the outcry of Jesus from the Cross attributes the whole of Psalm 22 to Jesus, then one evidence that hope is the topic, rather than despair, is the radical identification of Jesus with Israel. And this is not simply a matter of inheritance, of Jesus indicating that he shares in Israel's heritage and custom--as had frequently happened in earlier episodes in his life, going back to the time of his circumcision. But, in the midst of the Crucifixion, much more is involved; the identification relates to Israel's vocation as the holy nation called in history to recognize the reign of the Word of God in the world and to pioneer the praise and worship of God as Lord of Creation on behalf of all nations, tribes, peoples, and principalities. And, even more than that, the connection between Jesus and Israel signified in the psalm concerns the disposition of Israel's vocation. Thus, condemned by the Roman rulers, defamed by the ecclesiastical authorities, disfavored by the multitudes, betrayed, denied, abandoned by disciples, friends and family; reviled, rejected, humiliated, utterly beset, crucified: Jesus, crying aloud from the Cross, speaks as Israel. In that moment, there is nothing, there is no one left which is Israel except Jesus. He is, then, "King of the Jews," as the indictment affixed to the Cross states, but he is, then, at the same time, within himself, the embodiment of the whole people of God and he alone, then and there, assumes and exemplifies the generic vocation of Israel to trust and celebrate the redemptive work of the Word of God in history. In the drama of the Crucifixion, Jesus invoking the Twenty-second Psalm signifies that the Cross is the historic event in which Jesus Christ becomes Israel.
But I am a worm, not a man,
abused by all men, scorned by the people.
All who see me jeer at me,
make mouths at me and wag their heads:
"He threw himself on the Lord for rescue;
let the Lord deliver him, for he holds him dear!"
(Psalm 22:6-8)
Another way to behold the peculiar and intense identification of Jesus with Israel's vocation is in terms of the historic fulfillment of that which is written. Jesus was conscientious about this throughout his public ministry, from the time of his first appearance in the temple--and his reading from Scripture there (Luke 4:16-30; cf. Matthew 13:54-58, Mark 6:1-6). What is involved in this, so far as I understand, is not some simplistic or mechanistic process, but faithfulness in the performance of the witness to which one is called. So, here, the words from the Cross foreshadow the scenario of the psalm, while the psalm portends the event of the Crucifixion so that the narrative of the Crucifixion in the gospel accounts becomes a virtual recital of the psalm.
But thou art he who drew me from the womb,
who laid me at my mother's breast.
Upon thee was I cast at birth;
from my mother's womb thou hast been my God.
Be not far from me,
for trouble is near, and I have no helper.
A herd of bulls surrounds me,
great bulls of Bashan beset me.
Ravening and roaring lions
open their mouths wide against me.
My strength drains away like water
and all my bones are loose.
My heart has turned to wax and melts within me.
My mouth is dry as a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaw;
I am laid low in the dust of death,
The huntsmen are all about me;
a band of ruffians rings me round, and
they have hacked off my hands and feet.
I tell my tale of misery,
while they look on and gloat.
They share out my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothes.
But do not remain so far away, O Lord;
O my help, hasten to my aid.
Deliver my very self from the sword,
my precious life from the axe.
Save me from the lion's mouth,
my poor body from the horns of the wild ox.
(Psalm 22:9-21)
The psalm bespeaks one utterly assailed by the power of death: beset by the pervasiveness, militance and versatility of death; bereft of any capability to cope with death. The psalm bemoans the agony of death by crucifixion: the psalm betells the helplessness of humanity against the relentlessness of the great array of death. I am laid low in the dust of death.
That is the human destiny; more than that, that is the destiny of the whole of creation, apart from the event of the Word of God in history. And it is that radical confession of helplessness which is, at once, the preface of faith and the invocation of the grace of the Word of God. Sin is, actually, the idolatry of death. The last temptation (in truth, the only one) is to suppose that we can help ourselves by worshiping death, after the manner of the principalities and powers. That final arrogance must be confessed. Jesus confessed that in our behalf when he cried aloud from the Cross. When that confession is made we are freed to die and to know the resurrection from death.
The recital in the Apostles' Creed, He descended into Hell, has a similar significance: Hell is the realm of death; Hell is when and where the power of death is complete, unconditional, maximum, undisguised, most awesome and awful, unbridled, most terrible, perfected. That Jesus Christ descends into Hell means that as we die (in any sense of the term die) our expectation in death is encounter with the Word of God which is, so to speak, already there in the midst of death.
I will declare thy fame to my brethren;
I will praise thee in the midst of the assembly.
Praise him, you who fear the Lord;
all you sons of Jacob, do him honor;
stand in awe of him, all sons of Israel.
For he has not scorned the downtrodden,
nor shrunk in loathing from his pulpit,
nor hidden his face from him,
but gave heed to him when he cried out.
Thou dost inspire my praise in the full assembly;
and I will pay my vows before all who fear thee.
Let the humble eat and be satisfied.
Let those who seek the Lord praise him
and be in good heart forever.
Let all the ends of the earth remember
and turn again to the Lord;
let all the families of the nations
bow down before him.
For kingly power belongs to the Lord,
and dominion over the nations is his.
(Psalm 22:22-28)
The outcry from the Cross is no pathetic lament, but a song for Easter. And the hope which it expresses is not vague nor illusive nor fantasized, but concrete, and definitive and empirical. The Twenty-second Psalm (hence, Jesus on the Cross) manifests that hope in political terms. The influence of the psalm on the Crucifixion accounts underscores the political character of the Crucifixion. The psalm elaborates the politics of the Cross.
Any public execution is, obviously, a political event in a straightforward and literal sense, but the public execution of Jesus Christ has political connotations of immense, complex, and, indeed, cosmic scope. This becomes apparent, for example, when the images of the psalm portray the powerless victim threatened by predatory beasts, a familiar biblical way of denominating political principalities and powers. It is, after all, in the name of Caesar, the overruling principality, that the sovereignty of the Word of God over Creation is disputed and mocked (cf. Luke 23:1-2; Matthew 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17, Luke 20:19-26; Matthew 27:27-31, Mark 15:16-20, John 19:1-3).
The political reality of the Crucifixion is accentuated in the psalm where it is announced that the cry of the forlorn is heard and heeded (Psalm 22:24b). Notice the circumstances: the scene is the Judgment, with the whole of Creation in assemblage and with all who fear the Lord of history praising Him. Let it be mentioned here that the attribute which chiefly distinguishes Christians is, simply, that they fear the Lord now or already--before the Day of Judgment. That means specifically that they acknowledge that they live and act in the constant reality of being judged by God. Thus, nowadays, when people assemble as congregations in praise and worship of the Lord, this is an anticipation or preview of the Judgment. Where, instead, the regime is glorified or superstition prevails or religiosity is practiced, then the congregation indulges scandalous parody of the Judgment.
Notice, as well, that, in the context of the psalm, the event of the Judgment is, so to say, the first day that the downtrodden are no longer scorned (Psalm 22:24a). For the poor, the diseased, the oppressed, the dispossessed, the captive, the outcast of this world, the Day of Judgment in the Word of God means not only the day of justice, but also the day of justification, when their suffering is exposed as grace.
The politics of the Cross delivers a message to the nations, to all regimes and powers, and even unto the ends of the earth, marked by the cry of Jesus which invokes the psalm: kingly power belongs to the Lord, and dominion over the nations is his (Psalm 22:28). That is truly what the Incarnation is all about.
How can those buried in the earth
do him homage,
how can those who go down to the grave
bow before him?
But I shall live for his sake,
my posterity shall serve him.
This shall be told of the Lord to future generations;
and they shall justify him,
declaring to a people yet unborn
that this was his doing.
(Psalm 22:29-31)
In the psalm, the last word in the cry of Jesus from the Cross is an assurance of the efficacy of the Resurrection. To become and be a beneficiary of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ means to live here and now in a way which upholds and honors the sovereignty of the Word of God in this life in this world and which trusts the Judgment of the Word of God in history. That means freedom now from all conformities to death, freedom now from fear of the power of death, freedom now from the bondage of idolatry to death, freedom now to live in hope while awaiting the Judgment.
William Stringfellow was a theologian, lawyer, and contributing editor for Sojourners when this article appeared.
Copyright © 1982 by Abingdon. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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