Christianity is dead.

Christianity is dead. We hear this all the time, yet churches are open; people come. Despite this, I do believe Christianity is dead. Here is some evidence: 1) Man with semiautomatic rifle shoots at least 17 dead in south Florida high school. Semiautomatic rifles are available, no questions asked, at south Florida gun shows. Christianity is dead. 2) White cops who shoot and kill unresisting black people, go unpunished. Christianity is dead. 3) Men who rape, abuse, harass, and humiliate women have gone unpunished. Christianity is dead. 4) ICE rounds up, detains, and deports immigrants. Christianity is dead. 5) Report of sexual abuse of boys by priests and bishops is slander, says pope. Christianity is dead. 6) Police round up homeless people, and they “disappear.” Christianity is dead. Perhaps now you can see why I say Christianity is dead. When did you last hear a sermon on any of these atrocities? Never? People are suffering humiliation, injury, and death, and the church turns away from this suffering, because it may be “controversial,” “offensive,” or “not our problem.” The world returns the favor. The church just doesn’t get it, the church has nothing to say that’s real, or the church is an enabler of those who commit the atrocities. In any case, when suffering arises, the church is mute. Ironically, Christianity has at its heart a powerful resource that can help address the shock, grief, and disorientation brought on by atrocities. When faced with the atrocity of Jesus’ crucifixion, his followers, stunned, grieving, disorientated, soon began to hold memorial meals, telling stories and remembering Jesus, in spite of the Romans who wished to erase him by crucifixion. These memorials may be reflected in the Emmaus story in Luke 24. As the followers slowly recovered from their trauma, they began to seek meaning in these horrible events. For them, meaning was found by “searching the scriptures.” To do this, they used the Jewish tradition of midrash, which literally means commentary on Jewish texts. As they began telling stories about Jesus, they often told stories from the Hebrew Bible. In addition, as an aid to their oral story-telling, they often used a format, well known to all in Palestine in Jesus’ time: “The Tale of the Suffering Innocent One.” This provided the memory space to remember the death of Jesus. These memories are not “facts,” they are not “history.” Only to the extent that the crucifixion of Jesus is remembered, are they factual; all the rest is “fiction,” meaning that neither those remembering nor any one else available knew the facts of the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus. They told the story of Jesus crucified to give meaning to their feelings, not to leave a historical record. These ideas are laid out convincingly in a new book” Inventing the Passion: How the Death of Jesus Was Remembered” by Arthur J. Dewey. So at the heart of Christianity is a resource that could help those who have suffered loss, grief, and trauma if the churches would tell their stories within “The Tale of the Suffering Innocent One.” The Passion is not just about Jesus back when with no meaning for us now. In its outline, it’s the story of all of those traumatized, injured, or killed by powers greater than they are, including gun victims; blacks killed by white cops; women raped, harassed, humiliated by powerful men; immigrants rounded up, detained, and deported by ICE; boys and girls abused and silenced by priests and bishops; homeless people who have been “disappeared” by the police. We know about these atrocities not only because of news reports, but because gun victims are calling for gun control; blacks are saying, “Black Lives Matter;” women are telling their stories on #metoo; the sanctuary movement is calling attention to the abuses of ICE; “The Voice of the Faithful” is telling the story of sexual abuse in the church; Hope South Florida is helping homeless people tell their stories about police harassment. Where we are not hearing these stories is in church. The church usually stands mute in the face of all these atrocities. The church doesn’t want to get involved. It relates Jesus’ Passion as if it were an antique curiosity with nothing to do with us now. But now, many people are telling the stories of the atrocities that they or those they know have suffered. They are, even today, using much of “The Tale of the Suffering Innocent One.” Christianity is dead, as long as it refuses to see these stories as continuations of the Passion and to incorporate these ongoing stories into the Passion. May our Lenten journey include not only the story of Jesus, but the stories of all for whom he suffered.