Another Outrage

But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be 

(let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains;

-Mark 13: 14

There are lots of scriptures I could apply to the photo of El Presidente in front of St. Johns Episcopal Church up the road in DC.  But the one that came to mind was the rather cryptic verse from Mark chapter 13, about the desolating sacrilege.  Partly because people aren't exactly sure what Jesus was talking about.  Perhaps it was the pagan destruction and desecration of the temple that took place during the exile, maybe it was more of a prophecy about the coming destruction of the temple at the hands of the Romans (less likely).  But on a gut level it feels like it absolutely applies to anything that attempts to usurp the holy spaces with something profane.  We know that Jesus was outraged by the greed and falsity that had taken root in the Temple in Jerusalem, it was the thing that led him to his only real eruption of violent protest.  I'm not going to draw any connections between a specific church building and the Temple in Jerusalem.  Church building are ultimately just buildings, it doesn't make me angry when an old church is turned into a restaurant after the worshiping life of the people who made it sacred has ended.

No, it's not the building, it's not the Bible that Trump held up like some sort of bowling trophy, it's not any of the physical details of the moment that make it a desolating sacrilege.  It is rather the very notion of the moment and the details of its execution.  He had peaceful protesters, including one of the attending clergy at St. Johns tear gassed to clear the way for his little stroll across Lafayette square.  He did not pray, he did not read from that book he held up.  He had just made a very Caesar-like proclamation that all the state governors needed to get much tougher on the protesters, in case any of them really wanted to be more like Pontius Pilate.  As a Christian, I felt very violated by that picture, and I'm not a super sensitive sort when it comes to ritual sacredness.  I don't mind when the youth want to play hide and seek in the sanctuary of the church or when someone wants to hold a secular meeting in our building. My list of rules is pretty short when it comes to who can use the church facilities and for what.

A man who has done pretty much nothing in the past several months except foment division among the nation about a very serious health crisis and now about our old mortal sin of racism standing in front of a church waving a Bible is just a little too much to take.  I felt desolate, and I knew that this was really the meaning of sacrilege: a public display of absolutely empty pretense that is meant to seem like a statement of faith.  Did he do it to assure people that God was in control?  No, he did it to prove that he was in control, and didn't even manage to land that punch.  He doesn't look in control, he looks scared and small, which is what he is.  He is holding a book that he reportedly loves while everything that he says and does shows that he has absolutely no idea what is in it.  He is standing in front of a church that he thinks shows his point about how lawless and profane the protesters are because they vandalized it, when he has just tear gassed one of it's priests who was out working with the Black Lives Matter medical attendants.

Whatever Jesus was talking about when he told the people of 2000 years ago about the desolating sacrilege, I'm pretty sure he was also talking about what happened yesterday as well.