Rogue Reverend

The Wikingdom of God (a sermon)

Tao Te Ching

~translated (or perpetrated) by Ron Hogan

If you toss compliments around freely,
people will waste your time
trying to impress you.
If you give things too much value,
you’re going to get ripped off.
If you try to please people,
you’ll just make them pissed.

The Master leads
by clearing the crap
out of people’s heads
and opening their hearts.
He lowers their aspirations
and makes them suck in their guts.

He shows you how to forget
what you know and what you want,
so nobody can push you around.
If you think you’ve got the answers,
he’ll mess with your head.

Stop doing stuff all the time,
and watch what happens.

Mark 9:30-37

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been listening to a lot of TED talks, Technology, Entertainment and Design, these 18 minute (or so) talks about interesting things. My favorite for a while has been about the economics of open source.

But before I tell you about the talk, I thought I’d better explain open source:

From Wikipedia: “Open source is an approach to the design, development, and distribution of software, offering practical accessibility to a software’s source code.” In other words, software code is provided to any developer to modify or write code off of, not for money, but generally just for good will. Then the software is generally offered to the world free.

Microsoft Office is not open source. In fact, they work really hard to NOT be open source. They pay developers to write their software, they hire those people, pay benefits, taxes, insurance, vacation time, all that stuff. Open Office, an open source product similar to Microsoft Office (which, by the way, works with Microsoft Office) is worked on by non-employees, bugs are fixed by a person here or there, most people just like the idea that they are working on something meaningful, and the product is free. There are other examples of open source: Wikipedia, for example. Or music sites where you can download music for free. Google books is another example of open source. You see where this is leading? And now there’s open source movement in politics, business, ethics, media, education, the arts. What’s an example of Open Source art? Collage, of course.

Now on to the Ted talk: Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. In his Ted talk, he talks about the new open source economics.

Yochai posits first that we have had an information economy for a hundred and fifty years, since the newspaper first made its rounds. But to receive technology, you had to have an influx of capital, then the paper was printed, then paid for. He says, “Those who were producing information had to have a way of raising money to pay,” meaning they were market based.

Then another thing happened. Benkler continues:

Around June 2002, the world of supercomputers had a bombshell. The Japanese had for the first time created the fastest supercomputer — the NEC Earth Simulator… IBM Gene Blue has just edged ahead of the NEC Earth Simulator. All of this completely ignores the fact that throughout this period, there’s another supercomputer running in the world — SETI@Home — four and a half million users around the world, contributing their leftover computer cycles, whenever their computer isn’t working, by running a screen saver, and together sharing their resources to create a massive supercomputer that NASA harnesses to analyze the data coming from radio telescopes.

Benkler interprets this:

What this picture suggests to us is that we’ve got a radical change in the way information production and exchange is capitalized. Not that it’s become less capital intensive that there’s less money that’s required—but that the ownership of this capital, the way the capitalization happens, is radically distributed.

It’s open source!

Benkler goes on:

The story that most people know is the story of free or open-source software. This is market share of Apache Web server — one of the critical applications in Web-based communications. In 1995, two groups of people said, “Wow, this is really important, the Web! We need a much better Web server!” One was a motley collection of volunteers who just decided, you know, we really need this, we should write one, and what are we going to do with what — well, we’re gonna share it! And other people will be able to develop it. The other was Microsoft.

Now, if I told you that 10 years later, the motley crew of people who didn’t control anything that they produced acquired 20 percent of the market and was the red line, it would be amazing! Right? But in fact, of course, the story is it’s the 70 percent, including the major e-commerce site — 70 percent of a critical application on which web based communications and applications work is produced in this form in direct competition with Microsoft, not in a side issue — in a central strategic decision to try to capture a component of the net.

Benkler finishes here:

So essentially what we’re seeing is the emergence of a fourth transactional framework. It used to be that there were two primary dimensions along which you could divide things. They could be market based, or non-market based; they could be decentralized, or centralized. The price system was a market-based and decentralized system. If things worked better because you actually had somebody organizing them, you had firms if you wanted to be in the market — or you had governments or sometimes larger non-profits in the non-market. It was too expensive to have decentralized social production, to have decentralized action in society — that was not about society itself. It was in fact economic.

But what we’re seeing now is the emergence of this fourth system of social sharing and exchange. Not that it’s the first time that we do nice things to each other, or for each other, as social beings. We do it all the time. It’s that it’s the first time that it’s having major economic impact. What characterizes them is decentralized authority. You don’t have to ask permission, as you do in a property-based system. May I do this? It’s open for anyone to create and innovate and share, if they want to, by themselves or with others, because property is one mechanism of coordination. But it’s not the only one.

This is where it starts, “You have a belief: stuff will flow out of connected human beings.”

What if the Kingdom of God is Open Source?

Oh, my God, I think my head might implode.

What would it mean, if the Kingdom of God is actually the Wikingdom of God?

If the Kingdom of God, the manifestation of the Church in THIS age is actually the Wiki-ngdom of God, what changes? How do we reframe it?

First, it’s a radical departure from hierarchies. Decentralization is key. (Could this mean no denominations?)

Second, it is open for anyone to create and innovate and share, if they want to. (Could this mean that we’d be more inclusive, less dogmatic?)

Third, we share in the capitalization of it. We fund it. But we don’t gain monetarily like we would if we were to capitalize it. (Could this mean that we let go of property?)

Fourth, we have no control over it. (and we give up the illusion of control, too)

Fifth, we do our part and let the Spirit go from there.

The biggest argument to me about the nature of who Jesus was is this: he came to turn the world upside down. The world’s understanding of how things work and how things are, and how things are best.

And his disciples, walking with him, were dolt-ish about the whole thing.

I can just envision this scene. The disciples are chatting together, and Jesus walks up and they all get quiet. “Whatcha’ talking about?” Jesus asks. “Nuthin.” The disciples shift nervously. Finally, they confess, “We’re drawing straws for who is going to be first in heaven.”

He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

The Kingdom is not what we suppose.

Being Enmeshed (with God)

I’ve been getting my fill of enmeshed relationships lately. You know what I mean by enmeshed? Dr. Drew and Adam Corolla (really?) define enmeshed relationships as overdependency. Dr. Drew says:

Dr Drew: Anytime you need somebody in order to be complete, you’re overdependent. Anytime you get in a situation where you lose yourself in a relationship, you’re too dependent. If you’re in a situation where you can’t get out because there’s something about what that person has that you can’t do without, you’re in trouble.

To the extent that your feelings become another person’s, that’s too much. On the other hand, to be overly independent with no concern for the feelings of others is not right either; that heads toward a narcissistic relationship. You should be independent. You should be a separate person who comes together in a relationship, not one who blends into a relationship. It’s not like a puzzle where two pieces have to be together in order to fit or to complete one another. It’s more two separate entities creating a new entity when they’re together.

Ever since I went to the church with the “Jesus is my boyfriend” music, I’ve realized that the religion we’re encouraged to have is enmeshed! Think of some of the things we say, “I want people to see only Jesus in me.” And, “Not me, but Christ in me.” And, “I am nothing without God.” This is what we teach our newest members in our churches.

And the opposite side of the coin of enmeshment is “cutoff.” A cutoff relationship is “where two individuals have no contact at all, characterized by extreme disengagement and emotional intensity where there had formerly been love, affection, or friendliness.”

Isn’t that how we “recover” from our too-close relationship with God? We create a cutoff?

God wants us to be differentiated, not enmeshed. God wants us to be close, not cutoff. Intimate, not consumed. Together, but separate.

What the Bible Means to Me

Following my second sermon in a series on Romans yesterday, one of my church members asked me a question. I can’t get the exact wording, but the question was something like this:

Why do you preach from the Bible? Do you really think that we should use it as our baseline for understanding why we do what we do? Can’t we, just as easily, use reality and preach from there?

My answer is probably way too involved for a brief conversation following church. I decided to post it here.

I have an interesting relationship to the Bible. First, I absolutely love it. I want to read it, study it in the original language, preach from it, orientate my life to it. Second, I could know God without it. You get that? It reveals to me how THOSE people related to God. It reveals some about God’s nature. But it’s certainly not all of it. Nor does it explain the context in which I live today. So, while I love it, I am also cognizant of it’s limitations.

As I see it, the Bible is the story of a people (actually, two peoples) trying to understand their relationship with God. In the Hebrew Bible, we start with cosmic beginnings then to the particulars of the patriarchs and matriarchs, wanting to follow God, and all the while, being VERY human. Wow. Isn’t that my story?

Then with the gospels, it’s the teachings. The little phrases that Jesus says, that challenge me every day. “Love your enemies.” “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men.” Every day and in every way, the life and teachings of Jesus challenge me to move out of my boundaries.

But I have a different relationship with the Epistles. Especially Paul’s Epistles. Let me see if I can explain this…

Consider Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. It’s a wonderful letter written to a specific group of people during a specific time. MLK writes in the style of Paul, and there are some very moving parts to his letter. There are some things that have relevance to my life.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

Definitely a statement that has universal implications. However, some things are not so relevant.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.

The specificity of this statement has very little to do with me, with my life in Richmond, 46 years after the letter was written. Imagine, we take Paul’s letter, written nearly 2000 years ago, and try to make each one of his statements universal. I don’t believe that they are universally applicable.

So, what does the Bible mean to me? I like this quote (I think it’s from Marcus Borg), “The Bible isn’t true, but it’s real.” I think I know God (not wholly, really). I know God through people, through nature, through my experience. The Bible helps me, especially in this Judeo-Christian context in which I live, to orient my life to this One who I follow: God shown most fully through Christ.

Each Moment a White Bull Steps Shining Into the World

If the gods bring to you
a strange and frightening creature,
accept the gift
as if it were one you had chosen.

Say the accustomed prayers,
oil the hooves well,
caress the small ears with praise.

Have the new halter of woven silver
embedded with jewels.
Spare no expense, pay what is asked,
when a gift arrives from the sea.

Treat it as you yourself
would be treated,
brought speechless and naked
into the court of a king.

And when the request finally comes,
do not hesitate even an instant—

Stroke the white throat,
the heavy, trembling dewlaps
you’d come to believe were yours,
and plunge.

Not once
did you enter the pasture
without pause,
without yourself trembling.
That you came to love it, that was the gift.

Let the envious gods take back what they can.

Jane Hirshfield
first published in Five Points, vol. II, no. 1, Fall 1997
also from The Lives of the Heart

I ♥ the Holy Spirit

“The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience!” ~ Emily Dickinson

Most of you, by now, know that Pentecost is my favorite day in the Christian year. There’s about reasons why I love it, not the least of is that it’s really the birthday of the Church. Another reason? I love the story, and the visual of tongues of fire and people speaking in tongues.

But mostly I love it because it’s an encounter with the Holy Spirit. More »