January's Blogpost_Redemptions… Memories & Reflections.

When I was a boy it was all the rage for families to redeem coupons and green stamps. The dutiful because frugal American housewife of the 1950s and 60s cut out the coupons from the Sunday papers, and she filled the coupon books with the green stamps she got each time she went shopping. Then, the next time she went to the store she took in her coupons and redeemed them at the checkout for her merchandise, or she would send in her filled green stamps coupon book in exchange for some item from the company catalogue.

We have all also heard the expression “Redeem the time,” in the sense of – I really have to work hard to make sure I accomplish all that I wish to do before I have no more time to do it. In the world of my memories we acquired at a very early age our quasi axiomatic response to things like birthdays, and the wending of years wherein the old year gives way to the new, which is to suck the life even more desperately out of the present moment – to dramatically carpe the diem, because even a child knows that our Tempus is busy fugit-ing (tempus fugit) like the wind. It is a kind of “If it’s Tuesday, This Must be Belgium” moment on the whirlwind tour of our life.

The sentiment of carpe diem, or of desperately consuming the present instant, has been diversely expressed by poets & wordsmiths. From Horace’s Latin ode (Ode 1.11, 23 BC):

You should not ask it, it is wrong to know impious things, what end the
gods will have given to me, to you, O Leuconoe, and do not try
Babylonian calculations. How much better it is to endure whatever will be,
whether Jupiter has allotted to you more winters or the last,
which now weakens upon the opposed rocks of the Tyrrhenian
Sea: may you be wise, strain your wines, and because of short life
prune long anticipation. While we are speaking, envious life
will have fled: seize the day, trusting the future as little as possible.

To the Apostle Paul’s (c. 5-c. 67) New Testament exhortation to the Ephesians:

14 for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: "Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." 15 Be very careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, 16 making the most of every opportunity [literally = buying it all up—redeeming the time: e˙xagorazo/menoi to\n kairo/n], because the days are evil. 17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord's will is. (Cf. Col. 4:5)

To the Persian poet’s (1048-1131) urgent admonition in the Rubaiyat:

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:

The Bird of Time has but a little way

To fly—and Lo! The Bird is on the Wing.

To the somewhat deceptive sentiment expressed by Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) future Henry the Fourth:

If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work;
But when they seldom come, they wish'd for come,
And nothing pleaseth but rare accidents.
So, when this loose behavior I throw off
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes;
And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glittering o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off.
I'll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.

To French fabulist Jean de la Fontaine’s (1621-1695) moralizing fable LA CIGALE ET LA FOURMI (YouTube version for children here):

La Cigale, ayant chanté
                  Tout l'été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue.
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau (1).
Elle alla crier famine
Chez la Fourmi sa voisine,
La priant de lui prêter
Quelque grain pour subsister
Jusqu'à la saison nouvelle.
Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle,
Avant l'août (2), foi d'animal,
Intérêt et principal.
La Fourmi n'est pas prêteuse ;
C'est là son moindre défaut (3).
Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud ?
Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse (4).
Nuit et jour à tout venant
Je chantais, ne vous déplaise.
Vous chantiez ? j'en suis fort aise :
Et bien ! dansez maintenant.

To a spare and oh! so pragmatic American translation of the idea in Benjamin 

Franklin’s (1705/6-1790) Poor Richard’s Almanack: 

#134. Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to gain leisure. 

To, finally, the simply grand-motherly, unsourced and ubiquitous saying, which has nurtured us all from our toddling days:

 The early bird catches the worm.

There is more to this concept than simply meets the proverbial eye, however. Redemption is fundamentally a religious notion, and feels in fact rampantly Protestant in a Weberian work ethic kind of way – as in, let us transform or redeem what we must do as a chore (such as commuting to work – a task that is daily, banal, boring, etc.), into something that becomes a good in and of itself, and which we ought therefore to do! This notion of redemption is perhaps the earliest incarnation of multi-tasking; it is ancient paganism’s carpe diem translated into Protestant-ese. And as far as I can judge, the original and fundamental Christian notion, of redemption as an alchemical or moral transformation of the soul from a vulgar metal [lead] into a noble metal [gold], is a thought-gift primarily from the Apostle Paul to our Western intellectual tradition.

            Paul’s conception is quite distinct from the notion of redemption in the Hebrew Bible, where the overarching idea seems to belong almost uniquely to the idea that Israel was acquired as a ransom [lutro--, lu/tron; cf below], a bond or secured pledge held by the God of the Jews. This concept seems to have some connection in the Hebrew Bible to the idea that Israel comes into Yahweh’s possession by right of divine inheritance [cf. Aiken, Death of God, p. 6], and seems also analogous to some degree with the notion of Israel as the chosen One, as having been chosen out [e˙xairou/meno/ß--to take out, remove, choose, deliver] from among the nations, an expression or idea with which it is interchangeably translated in the English language editions. The notion of redemption in the Hebrew Bible does not generally seem to have a higher moral or metaphorical value.

            Likewise, the notion of redemption of any sort is missing, significantly, from Jesus’ teachings and discourses, if we may judge by its absence from the Gospel narratives in Matthew and John, nor is the notion important in the Epistles of James (brother of Jesus), Jude (another brother of Jesus), or the writer of Hebrews, who was clearly Jewish but not necessarily a brother of Jesus. Nor does redemption seem particularly to be a New Testament era Hellenistic idea, because it is absent from the writings of Mark (good evidence suggests M. was not Jewish), and Luke (author of the Gospel of Luke & the Acts of the Apostles), who was obviously a gentile and a native speaker of Greek.

There are three Greek words in the New Testament that seem to converge into this idea, which the Church Fathers, theologians, and later churchified folk will expound and expostulate as Christian redemption. The first word is the rather banal agoraz-- (aÓgora¿zw), which simply means to purchase or to buy… as in: I’m going to the store to buy some milk and toilet paper, does anyone need anything else? It is used this way, in a normal and commercial iteration, in the Gospels, by Paul, and by John, author of the Revelation. (Matt 13:44, 46, 14:15, 21:12, 25:9-10, 27:7; Mark 6:36-37, 11:15, 15:46, 16:1; Luke 9:13, 14:18-19, 17:28, 22:36; John 4:8, 6:5, 13:29; and also in I Cor. 6:20, 7:30; Rev. 3:18, 13:17, 18:11).

            However, Paul also uses this term twice in a more specific commercial way, in the very interesting and rich sense of the Corinthian Christian having been purchased from the slave market (I Cor. 6:20 & 7:23). The term is also used in this way in the Second Epistle of Peter (2:1), although the epistle is considered by most scholars to be of questionable authorship; and it is very clearly used again in this sense by the author of the Revelation (5:9, and 14:3-4), who may or may not have been the same John who authored the Gospel of John.­­­­­­­­­

            So this particular term, agoraz--, then, is not the sense of redemption that most interests us in this reflection.

­

There is a second Greek term of interest in this context of the Christian idea of redemption in the NT, which is lutro-- (lu/tro/ß --), in the sense of the ransom to be negotiated and paid for the release or redemption of hostages.  This usage, however, despite being quite consistent with typical Jewish belief abundantly manifested in the Hebrew Bible, is not terribly common in the New Testament, occurring only five times –in Matthew (20:28), Mark (10:45), Luke (24:21), Paul’s Epistle to Titus (2:14), and Peter’s first Epistle (1:18).

The third and final Greek term that is of interest to us concerning the question of redemption in the NT is exaireo—(e˙xairew), which, as we saw earlier, speaks to the idea of being chosen out from among, or perhaps more consistent with NT usage: to being lifted out from or delivered from a situation.

            This expression is certainly the most theologically textured of the three terms in the NT, because it is quite specific in scope and intent; it is also the most consistently Jewish of the three NT expressions. The image, of course, is when we are at the grocery store and we look at all the cantaloupes, as my Grandmother used to do, then we pick one up, thump it on the end, and if we like what we hear we choose that one from among all those on offer. If not, we put it back and repeat the process. This image is absolutely in keeping with the Jewish notion of Israel as the chosen One from among the nations, but its NT translation is in fact subtly different in meaning.

            The primary difference is quantitative. In the Hebrew Bible it is Israel itself, the national ethnicity, which is redeemed or chosen out; this idea/usage is confirmed in Luke 24:21, and Peter even goes so far as to write that those Jews of the early Jesus Movement were delivered from (using lu/tro/ß --) the “manner of life handed down from your fathers” (i.e., the Jews; I Peter 1:18). It is at this point in our reflection that the three different Greek terms start to become somewhat fuzzy and (con)-fused both in Greek and in their English translations, because in the other occurrences of the NT, Paul writes that it is the individual who is “chosen out from” or “delivered from” exaireo—(e˙xairew), the Law (Gal. 3:13, 4:5), which certainly seems to suggest a degree of fusion among these word-concepts in the NT.

In Christian theology systematically conceived, the idea of redemption falls under the scholarly rubric of Christology, or the study of the person and work of Christ. One of the questions in Christology, of course, is to determine how one is to understand the death of Christ—what is the purpose or usefulness or interest to anyone of a man/God Himself suffering and dying, as opposed to harassing maidens, like Zeus or Apollo, or to fighting in battles, like Poseidon “far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,” or to doing any number of other divine activities that have proved so tragically irksome to men in their world? And the big take-home idea is that Christian scholars have decided that the suffering and death of Christ is atonement – a repayment or reparation, if you will, for when Man, in the person of Adam, poached and purloined in the big Someone Else’s Edenic fruit orchard. In the Christian scheme of things, a man/God’s atonement or repayment for the garden-variety crime of Man is in fact the purchase price for human redemption. To hark back to our earlier metaphor: in this scheme Christ becomes the Green Stamp that, when redeemed for the merchandise in the company catalogue—i.e., moral acquittal for plundered apples, allows Man to be a player in this God’s divine Game.

            Just as a pure idea there are a number of ways to interpret and to give value to the Story of Christ’s suffering and death. For example, one can conceive of Christ’s suffering and death 1) as a moral example that Man should follow – that our lives should embody the value of self-sacrifice and the preferment of the Other over the self; or we can view atonement 2) as a demonstration of God’s love, an abstract truth that should teach us to be better humans (the Moral Influence theory); or one can interpret Christ’s atoning work 3) as a demonstration of divine justice (the Governmental theory); or 4) as a victory over the forces of sin and evil (the Ransom theory, which, by the way, was the most popular theory in the early church); or, finally, atonement can be conceived 5) as compensation to the divine Father for crimes committed against His Person (the Propitiation or Penal-Substitution theory). For the purpose of “cutting to the chase,” the dominant Protestant conclusion on this question is #5.

All of which brings me to the original inspiration for this reflection. In the 2004 film Man on Fire, directed by Tony Scott, the protagonist, Creasy, is a former CIA operative and Force Recon Marine turned despondent and alcoholic bodyguard in Mexico. His charge, a nine-year old girl who has, in the course of things, also become his friend, is abducted in Mexico City, which has a thriving “kidnapping-for-ransom” industry; and Creasy is seriously if not mortally injured during the girl’s abduction.

            So, to set the scene: Creasy is a man who absolutely knows that he himself can hope for no personal redemption. He is despondent and alcoholic because he has done very bad, unforgiveable, and therefore irreparable (i.e., irredeemable) things during his U.S. military career—an emotional/spiritual state of mind that is set up during a conversation with his former military colleague.

Creasy: Do you think God'll forgive us for what we've done?
Rayburn: No.

When Creasy then learns that his young charge, Pita, has survived the abduction and is still alive and being held for ransom, and despite his grievous injuries, he vacates his hospital bed to go on a killing rampage. In a conversation with the little girl’s mother…

Lisa: What are you gonna do?
Creasy: What I do best. I'm gonna kill 'em. Anyone that was involved. Anybody who profited from it. Anybody who opens their eyes at me.
Lisa: [Whispering] You kill 'em all.

Although the narrative of this film might, at first blush, have all the elements of a straightforward revenge tale, it is actually at this point that the story becomes interesting as a possible Redemption Story. We have already seen in the film a leitmotiv of kidnapping (holding in bondage) and ransom (redemption in exchange for payment or bond), which is certainly one of the traditional categories of redemption or freedom in the Christian myth.

            Yet we are left wondering at this point why a depressed soldier, who knows there can be no redemption for himself, nevertheless so deliberately sets out to sacrifice himself for this forsaken little girl who has become his friend. Should we read this as a form of efficient suicidal calculation – the exchange of one old and weary, fatally wounded body in exchange for a young child’s potential for life? Perhaps then it is just a tale of revenge… although the chances are excellent in this telling that everyone involved, including Creasy and the girl, will all end up dead? Somehow such an irrational outworking of a revenge tale is unsatisfying.

            In an interesting twist, Creasy’s friend and former colleague, Ray, does not read C.’s motivation simply as an act of revenge; rather, he describes C.’s actions as something higher and more beautiful, something more akin to art (YouTube clip here).

Rayburn: He'll deliver more justice in a weekend than ten years of your courts and tribunals. (…)
Rayburn: She [the girl] showed him it was OK to live again.

Rayburn: And they're gonna wish they never touched a hair on her head. (…)
Rayburn: A man can be an artist... in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasey's art is death. He's about to paint his masterpiece. (…)

Creasy is supreme in his desire, his absolute need, for redemption. It becomes logical, then, within the framework of the Western redemption mythology that frames Creasy’s story, that the focus and possibility of any redemption for him should lay both in his atonement (suffering and death) for the innocent child, as well as in his exchange/payment—he will become the desperately needed Green Stamp/bond to be redeemed for a kidnapped girl-child held in bond-age. So he exchanges his life for hers.

We certainly tend to read this act as noble, or at least beautiful. Yet what, exactly, is actually redeemed in the exchange of Creasy for the girl? Is this simply about the possibility of a younger person having (not missing prematurely) the opportunities that are afforded one by virtue of living through the days of a body’s potential life? Is this Story then just about seconds and minutes, days and weeks, months and years, passed in eating, defecating, loving, copulating, working, playing, crying, laughing, decaying & dying? Is this the redemption that C was looking for, that moved him? Creasy is going to die anyway from his wounds; so he is willing to sacrifice his dying body for the possibility of a young child having her life to live out? This ungenerous interpretation does not yield us a tale that is either noble or beautiful.

A redemption story is a new world Story, and far removed from the manly loyalties and loves that moved the greathearted Greeks in their world. Creasy’s idea of redemption is that we acquire debt in our lives that wants to be repaid; it is not so much a concept of economics, as it is a recognition that we do not achieve our lives alone, unaffiliated, and unaided.

            This is the problematic “rub” in redemption stories – that they necessarily put a burden on the Other, the Innocent Bond (Israel, Christian, little girl, etc.) who has been exchanged or redeemed; and, frankly, the Other could perceive this burden as repressive, an unsought for debt that s/he might eventually wish to or be able to repay, or not. So what might the redeemed life for the Other look like? Is it just the body living through its days like any other animal, moved neither by beauty or nobility? Or must the life now-delivered carry with it commitment to some or any particular cause? To Others? To some specific value? To Justice? To Generosity? Or is just living a normal body-life enough?

One wise Answer, at the very least, would seem to be that the redeemed life should take ownership of the “burden” of becoming the beautiful life, a life created as Art. The life in which the acts that accompany us through our days are beautiful…. Each in themselves, complete…

Let us work hard to redeem this new-born year.