Against Tyranny ep. 01 / Courage & the life of Faith

Watch episode 1 of 6 of St. Stephens’ Lenten web series, Against Tyranny, a conversation about faith and discipleship and public life reflected against scriptre and Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny. Buy the book locally HERE. Each week, Steve and Ethan join with a different guest–a friend or colleague. This week we have with us Mary Lim-Lampe, J.D., the executive director and lead organizer of Genesis of California, an East Bay affiliate of the national Gameliel community organizing network. You can learn more about Genesis on their website or on Facebook.

This week, we begin the series discussion chapter 22 of the Gospel of Luke and chapter 20 of On Tyranny.

Ethan:

Hello, and welcome to the beginning of this web series for the season of Lent that we’re calling ‘Against Tyranny’. My name is Krista Tippett. I’m kidding. That’s a joke. My name is Ethan. I’m here with my friends and colleagues, Steve and Mary. Steve, would you like to give a little bit of an intro to what we’re doing?

Steve:

Thanks. So it’s conventional for churches during the season of Lent to offer something for congregants to chew on and to learn from, and to enhance their own practices, whatever discipline they’re engaged in during that season. And because we couldn’t gather still in the pandemic, we thought of something that we could do in this way, and which would be small discussions that would be on a topic that would be applicable both to scripture and tradition, and also to the world that we live in, because our goal is always to be applying scripture and the teachings of tradition to the world we live in so that we can live our lives more faithfully, more in accordance with the faith that God has given us. And about a month or so ago, I came across this little book called On Tyranny, 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder.

Steve:

He’s a historian and each of the 20 chapters of this book are really short. They’re like two or three pages long, and each of them is derived from some lesson of history that happened in the 20th century. And Snyder’s basic frame for the book is that when the founders of the United States were organizing themselves as a government, they were concerned, deeply concerned about tyranny, having just thrown off the tyranny of English colonial power. And so they looked to history, specifically the Roman empire about what they might do to create a government that would resist tyranny or hedge against tyranny, which they knew was us. We were susceptible to Snyder’s project is to say that since then, particularly in the 20th century, we’ve seen tyrannical governments arise in a lot of different contexts. And so we’ve learned more and we should avail ourselves of those lessons.

Steve:

When I read it, I thought it was also helpful to me because it’s been a long standing project of my own to try to tease out and get clear about the way that I think scripture the Bible itself is also a document that invites us to be mindful of and strengthened against tyranny. And that could be geopolitical tyranny as in the case of Pharaoh in Egypt and the struggle that Moses and the Israelites have to liberate themselves from that tyranny. And it could also be a spiritual tyranny that we engage in in other ways with ourselves and with one another. So all of us on some level are seeking a kind of liberation depending on where we find ourselves located in the world politically, socially. And another way is that liberation might be political. It might be economic, it might be social, it might be spiritual. So we just thought it would be cool to do a series of conversations and invite other knowledgeable people who care about these things into the conversation to talk about tyranny and history, tyranny in the world, tyranny and the Bible tyranny and ourselves, and how can we get more free? So welcome to it.

Ethan:

Steve and I are both on staff at St. Stephen’s in Orinda. But we have a guest with us and we will have a guest with us each week. I’m very happy that Mary Lynn Lampe is with us. I know Mary because well, for a couple of reasons. But most officially because I did my seminary field education with Mary and with Genesis. So Mary, I would love for you to introduce yourself in whatever way you’d like to.

Mary:

Okay. thank you. Thank you for the invitation. I am Mary Lim Lampe and I’m executive director of Genesis. Genesis is a faith and community organizing group located in the East Bay. We are essentially a coalition of congregations and organizations that join together to find ways to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God. It’s a tricky thing to find ways to do justice. And so we organize people around issue campaigns. One of our most notable is to find funding and change policies. So there is a free youth bus pass in Alameda County. And I think that one of the things that I like to say, cause I’ve been a faith-based organizer for now going on 13 years I would say that I’m also a person of faith who takes my faith journey really seriously. I grew up Roman Catholic and I, I think a lot about how to live out my faith and animate my faith in the world. And so I really appreciate the invitation and the opportunity to read this book, which I probably would never have read, if it wasn’t for your invitation.

Ethan:

Awesome. So good to have you with us. The way that we’re going to structure each of these weeks is that we are going to pick a different chapter or two of the book, and we are going to line it up against a passage of scripture and we thought it would be fun and funny to begin in week one with the end, both of the book and the gospels. So we’re going to start with chapter 20 and we’ll laugh that it’s this long (*holds up book, chapter is one sentence*), so I’m going to read it to us. And then I’ll read the passage from the gospel of Luke and then we’ll get into it. So this chapter, gosh, this feels like Sunday school. This chapter is called be as courageous as you can.

Ethan:

“If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.” I felt funny to read that in my Sunday school voice,

“if none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”

And this is a passage from the 22nd chapter of the gospel of Luke starts in verse 54:

Then they seized Jesus and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house. But Peter was following at a distance when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat among them and a servant girl seen him in the firelight, stared at him and said, this man also was with him, but Peter denied it saying woman. I do not know him a little later. Someone else on seeing him said, you also are one of them, but Peter said, man, I am not. Then about an hour later, still another kept insisting. Surely this is the man also who was with him for he is a Galilean. But Peter said, man, I do not know what you are talking about. And at that moment, while he was still speaking, the crowed, the Lord turned and looked at Peter, then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said to him before the crows today, you will deny me three times and Peter without and wept bitterly.

Ethan:

So this chapter is called “be as courageous as you can.” And simply by way of beginning, I might ask the three of us, what has courage got to do with being a Christian?

Mary:

Well, I think when I was reflecting on this chapter I thought about what courage has to do with being a person of faith. But frankly, what courage has to do with just opening this book– it’s called On Tyranny. And so just cracking the book open and being willing to hear what on tyranny has to say, there’s that. There’s also just that it takes courage to be a person of faith and to walk in believing something that is unseen. And so there’s courage and believing there’s courage in expressing our faith and animating it and seeing in the world. The way that I do faith is doing justice. And so facing opposition to justice takes courage. And I also think the last thing I would say is having courage to—this is not a word that people love, but to—evangelize people, to actually express your faith and invite people. It just, it takes a ton of courage.

Steve:

Yeah. I’ll thank you. I’ll totally second. Everything you said. And also you know, it occurred to me thinking about it that the, the angelic address, anytime anybody in scripture encounters an angelic, being a messenger from God they’re, they’re afraid. And the first word that the angel says to them is, do not be afraid. So even if nothing else, we might conclude from that, from the regularity of that, from the fact that that happens consistently throughout scripture, we might conclude that the people who wrote those stories told those stories, codified those stories. They were trying to highlight the feature of courage as a response to the call from God, to, to whatever. And I, that God knows that we might be afraid, but encourages us to say don’t be afraid. And so I think like right off the bat, there’s this baseline kind of ground level articulation that as Mary said, “I’d like to be a faithful person to respond to God in any way”, assumes that there’s going to be some fear involved and that courage will be required.

Steve:

So that comes to mind. But also another thing that comes to mind is the difference or the distinction between the stories that we inherit from scripture and which bear fruit in our own lives of faith and where courage might appear in those stories are in our lives. And the story that often gets told in the church, which is that the church is a place of safety. And I think there’s a lot more that we could say about that. And that’s a very rich subject, but just without wanting to turn the church into a place of of abuse, I think it’s that we are beholden to hear those stories from scripture and think of the church, not as a place of safety, so much as a place where people gain courage, which involves risk and uncertainty and demands faith on the part of those of us who are choosing to be here. So we’ve got part of our inheritance, I think is a little too much of a sense that church is a place of safety and not quite enough of a sense church is a place of risk and requires courage. And so I liked the connection there because I think it’s also like deeply rooted in scripture. So,

Ethan:

You know, I mean, one of the ways that I think about what it means to be a Christian is that church is the place that asks me to ask hard questions that I’m not asked to ask in other places, right? Like there’s a lot of places to like get your spiritual meaning to meet people, to be in community, to do fulfilling service. But for me, church is the place that is intended to hold a space that offers more complicated answers and frankly offers more complicated questions than I think a lot of the world does. I think there’s a great benefit to that, because the church also asks us to imagine a different future to imagine that another world as possible and to ask us to name that everything that’s going on out there is not what should be happening.

Ethan:

Right? Like we know that something’s off. Church asks us to imagine another future, but also then requires us to admit our part in it. And I think that that kind of points to me, Mary, some of what you said about how it takes courage to even open a book like this, or to ask these questions because many people could simply shut their front door, you know and, and hide and well consolidate their lives and their senses of safety and think that there’s not a lot wrong or that they don’t have a role to play in that. So it takes courage not to do that.

Steve:

Mary I’m curious, I feel like, you know, we could have lots of illustrations and examples from parish life about what that looks like, but I’m curious if you have, if anything comes to mind for you about your working experience that illustrates this idea or these principles, we think about this a lot because we, as a practice and organizing, and then like our trainings, we have invited people not to think about safe space, but brave, right?

Mary:

I have no idea what is going to make you safe or make you feel safe. I only know that I want to invite you to be brave and what that means for you might be different than what it means for me. So that’s, that’s a place. I think that also at the end of the day, you know, Genesis looks for the root causes of poverty, the root causes of inequity and injustice and overlaid is, you know, lots of policies that are rooted in capitalism and white supremacy and patriarchy. And there’s a lot of courage in inviting people to, to examine how we all benefit every day from those structures. Our goal is to always keep the door ajar. It’s a lot like the ministry of any priest is just keep the ears open, keep the door ajar.

Mary:

And if we have done the opposite and the door just shuts and the window is closed and there’s no more listening than we’ve done the opposite of what our goal is. So inviting people into hard conversations is probably one of the, the is probably one of the most courageous things that we ask people to do. We also don’t see race conversations as something I know that you all are grappling with as a congregation, which is like amazing, that takes immense courage because we’ve also seen terrible ways that we have done race conversations and dialogue in the world. Like there’ve been divisive and, you know, unhelpful and unproductive ways to talk about race. So the examination of knowing that we benefit and that we are part of a dominant culture that has oppressed people.

Ethan:

You know, the definition that I’ve found for tyranny, cause that that word carries a lot in it—both the unofficial meanings, but also kind the of colloquial political meaning—the broad definition, it is just cruel unreasonable or arbitrary use of power or control. And I think what you mentioned Mary is the idea that it takes different work for different kinds of people to talk about this stuff. You know, like we all sort of find ourselves in different social, political, economic positions, in this society. And I think one of the things we suffer under is the idea that we each have different than conflicting views of what counts as “cruel” or “unreasonable” or “arbitrary”. I think that’s one of the big things that’s going on right now. That from where we sit in our respective places we may or may not be experiencing the cruel or unreasonable or arbitrary natures of what this society impugns on people, you know, like we may be feeling different levels of safety.

Ethan:

And I think to some extent, you know, a lot of people kind of get this, you know, like there’s, there’s that access of difference in a lot of different ways, right? Like what does it feel like to be a queer person or a gay person in this society? What does it feel like to be an old person, when society is sort of oriented around youth? What does it feel like to be a woman and to experience those gender dynamics? And race and ability level what may seem reasonable to me is probably experienced really differently for say women or black people or people who are in wheelchairs. And I think we have so many suppositions that we hold so, so tightly, and I think courage has a role to play in that too. If I have an idea about how things are good or fair, it just kind of takes a minute to work up the gumption to say, you know, I wonder if I’m not seeing the whole picture here, you know, I wonder if what feels like democracy to me actually is tyranny to somebody else.

Steve:

Yeah, no doubt. So I’m the Lieutenant timekeeper on this conversation? I think we’re approaching the time, but I wanna if I can offer just remind us, we were talking earlier about this before, before we began recording and just remind us what this one, this one sentence chapter says is “if none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.” And we talked earlier about the part of the challenge of these kinds of messages is one could easily have seen that statement painted on a sign, being held by the people who were violently invading the Capitol on January 6th, interrupting a democratic process to certify a democratic election in a free democratic Republic. So to Ethan’s point, you know, my whole experience of American politics ever since I became kind of aware of them, at least at the federal level is that everybody always thinks that it’s the other side that’s going to lead us to tyranny.

Steve:

And sometimes those accusations look like various members of the ruling class, like slinging mud at each other about who’s the tyrant. And in the meantime, as both of you, I’ve observed, there have been black people and women and gay and queer people living under the tyranny of a system that already disestablishes them as members of society. So part of the courage involved as Christians and to connect back to the story about Jesus and Peter part of the courage sometimes I think is to see ourselves as closely aligned with our savior as close as Peter might’ve been and to hear from our savior that we’re, we’re part of the problem that our close alignment with Jesus does not mean we have exempted ourselves from the problem. It actually means we’re closer to the voice looking at us and telling us “here’s what you did to contribute to the thing that you find painful.” It’s difficult. So that takes courage, right? To align ourselves with the one who we say saves us, but whose word to us is “you denied me.”

Mary:

My reflection is also another passage of Luke and I am not a biblical scholar. And, but it reminds me of this passage that we go to about releasing the captives. You know, that often in my work in faith-based organizing that often the people, people from the dominant culture believe that it’s their job to release the captives, but there’s courage that it takes to realize that we’re actually all captive of this tyranny. I think that we all had trouble with the binary of this chapter, this one line chapter, we had the binary of like, “you either do this or you do that.” I just have trouble with binaries because it, it just feels like it’s always like that with capitalism, you either win or you lose, but there is this idea of actually we’re all captive, that we are aligning ourselves with our savior, but we’re also aligning ourselves with those who are vulnerable and oppressed and what an amazing justice sermon that is. What would happen differently in our communities, if we all acted as if we are interconnected and siblings and brothers and sisters and relatives?

Ethan:

You know, in that passage of scripture Peter has the option to unalign himself from Jesus. You know, like Jesus is the one whose neck is on the chopping block. And over and over, Peter’s asked if he can be identified with Jesus. And that’s a really, that’s a really clear dynamic, right? There’s a person who the government wants to kill and like—let’s be like, the government killed Jesus, like that’s what happened. There’s a person who is facing the consequences and there’s a person who is afraid of facing those same consequences, but who can say, “that’s not me.” And I think that’s, that’s what requires some courage and some real grappling on our part. Cause for a lot of us, our necks are not on the chopping block or they’re not on the chopping block yet. And that sounds ominous, but they’re not on the chopping block right now.

Ethan:

But a lot of people are telling us that theirs are, and that they’re there right now. And that they’ve been there for as long as they can remember. I think what you’re saying, Mary though is also that it’s not fun to be Peter if you skirt the consequences, he went away and wept bitterly. Yeah. So I think part of what we’re hearing is that we don’t have to choose courage. But maybe we also get to decide or realize or recognize that being not courageous, but keeping our safety—that also has a cost. That’s a heavy thing for a Wednesday afternoon. But it’s in a year of heavy things. So it makes sense. I wonder if anybody has any final thoughts?

Mary:

Well, I mean, I, I just am really reflecting about the courage that it takes to have this Lenten series of videos with this subject matter because you don’t ha you didn’t have to do this. And so I think that it just takes a lot of guts and courage to and it just actually, it must be reflected in your ministry of St. Stephens to have conversations that push people to their edges around courage. What that’s, this is why I love lent is that you have to contemplate. What, what would you do if you were… how are you going to witness? Good Friday for me is a devastating day. Easter vigil is my favorite part of Lent of like, how will you witness? How will you keep the secrets? How will you tell the story? How will you stand up to people who are opposed to you? How will you do all of that? I love the I love the ritual of being able to participate. And so I just appreciate you all for the invitation and the opportunity. I really sweated over this book. I really did.

Steve:

Well. We’re so glad that you came to join us for this. I think we’ll have to end this now cause we could go on forever and people will just have to get the book themselves, have their own courageous conversations, come back for the next episode whenever we do that. And just keep being brave. Mary, thank you so much. You’re welcome. Thank you.

Ethan:

And as a concluding thought for all of you, I mean, again, we’ll say it’s like five bucks, it’s on Kindle, it’s on audible. It’ll take you like 45 minutes to read the whole thing. But take away question: you know, we’re talking about courage and it’s something that feels brand new. But a lot of us know how to be courageous and we know how to turn over the log and see all the worms and bugs and beetles and stag beetles and whatever. So when have you had to be courageous in your life? When have you had to look at something that you didn’t want to look at or realize something that you didn’t want to realize and how can it help you remember ways to be courageous now?