The Golden Ass

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you…You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. – James 5: 1, 5-6 (NRSV)

In Part 1, I presented the Epst&!n files as a presumed story of the creation of the world by a cabal of rich, free men who control everything. And, I submitted that, as Christians tasked with immersion in and living out of the script for the world we call the scriptures, the properly ordered way to name and frame the story of the Epst&!n files is as one of child sacrifice. I argued that such a framing was important for three reasons:

First – the larger picture by which we understand who we are, and how we know our knowing in the first place. We are not the ground of our own being, and we are not left to figure out what’s going on by ourselves. To recognize the image of a cabal of free men who control everything as a shared fantasy is to properly order the relationships between mortality and divinity, and it is thus also to properly order our attention.

Second - Theology offers explanations of things we’re otherwise left either curiously wondering or interminably and reactively furious about. “Why is nothing happening? What the h&ll is going on!?” “Why are they speaking as though this doesn’t matter?” “Why is no one hearing the voices of the women?” The very need for such questions is because of the story in which we’re all immersed together. Thousands were raped. We’re all immersed. We all live in a world governed by ritual sacrifice of the chaos-enemy by the victorious hero who is himself fashioned in the image of fantastical idols that depict an unknown, powerfully terrifying, and functionally divine Master from above. Not only that, but the body, blood, guts, and soul of the silenced and vanquished enemy is the constitution of this world created by human hands, in which we’re all immersed together.

Third – how do we respond? Is there a world made not by human hands? If so, what is it like? If the story of the Epst&!n files is one of child sacrifice that creates and orders our world, what do we do? Ironically, it is the sacrifice of Isaac that teaches us how to respond in this moment. We need guidance, and it actually requires revelation. And, the revelation itself invites us into our response. That response is movement from terrifyingly shamed silence to the hearing of the Silence of wondrous awe that responds to the Word spoken. Of course, this means we will then, in the end, find ourselves living in a new world, hearing voices we otherwise could not, speaking a new language, and walking a radically different path.

HOW DO WE RESPOND?

We have seen that the answer to the question, “What the h&ll is going on?” is ritual child sacrifice, and in the specific context of a sex cult. We have also seen that naming it this way orients us inside the ancient script we call the scriptures that name and characterize the world we inhabit and that script the action that happens in it. When faced with the horrifically terrifying reality to which the Epst&!n files point, many of us want not only a language that gives account but also actual accountability. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that’s what we want when and if we actually do face the reality rather than deflecting from, covering over, or ignoring it. And, we want the abuse to stop. We want sanity and liberation from the false Master. We all want accountability, but the story itself is a linguistic account. The question is, what story? To name it child sacrifice rather than simply or only “abuse,” or perhaps even r@pe, is to answer this question. It is to place and thus find ourselves inside the tradition with which, if we are Christian, we identify.

And, because we are not the authors of the script, because humans are not and do not occupy the central position of and in the cosmos – because we neither make choices as freely as we imagine nor control outcomes as our vain fantasies would have it - to name the story in which we find ourselves, to orient ourselves in it itself constitutes a response. To name our position as that of the responsive rather than presuming to take up or grasp for positions of either the generative mover or final authority is itself a response to what we see happening. We are thus left with the question of what happens inside that story we inhabit when the Master’s desire for victorious ascent comes to the moment and place of fulfillment.

Collage: Top two photos of artist Nick Cave’s “Soundsuit” (photos by author). Bottom Left Window of Michelangelo’s Campidoglio, in Rome, Italy (credit mblage on IG). Bottom Right: Detail of Filippo Brunelleschi’s Cupola atop his infamous “Duomo” of Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence, Italy (credit gogenevieve on IG).
When I visited Chicago’s Museum of Modern Art in Chicago in June of 2022 and saw Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, the curator directed my attention to Cave’s own story and response. It turns out to itself sound out to us as an echo and extension of the story we are here inhabiting and narrating. Cave’s Soundsuit is a kind of icon that helps us enter his story, to see the world he sees, put ourselves in the position of the character he plays, and to begin to learn the language he speaks. The museum curator teaches us that Cave’s Soundsuit came about as a response to the 1991 beating of Rodney King. As Cave was sitting in a Los Angeles park contemplating what happened, he starting gathering sticks. As the curator explains tells Cave's story:

“He later sewed the twigs into a garment envisioned as a suit of armor: a means of obscuring his identity as a queer Black man for protection while paradoxically amplifying his radical otherness. The origin of the name 'Soundsuit' came from the experience of wearing the garment. According to Cave, 'Once I put it on and moved in it, I realized that was the protest - the sound it made. In order to be heard, you gotta’ make sound.'”

First, notice that the mirroring double images of protecting and making sound depicted by the “garment” are those of a person taking up a character in the action of a story set in a world characterized by sacrificial violence by presumed heroes with fantasies of ultimate victory. As Pete Hegseth said it: "The warrior who is willing to lay down his life for his unit, his country, and his Creator, that warrior finds eternal life.” Of course a warrior who twists the image of Christ into its opposite is also tasked with the sacrificial slaughter of shamed enemies.

By contrast, the sound of the twigs rustling with Cave’s movement is the sound of his existing. And, in the context of his story, of our story, this sound appears on the horizon as not that of his slaughter, his silencing, or his shaming. It is not the immobilized silent scream of the shamed child locked in the dungeon of a Tower and penetrated by a sequence of banal men who, by and in the very act of penetrative violence, presume to render themselves representatives of the heroically victorious Master from above. The sound of Cave’s existing is the mirrored double to the tearing apart of his flesh with the butcher knife Abraham raised to heaven before the angel spoke. Cave’s Soundsuit is not the sound of burning flesh bound to an altar constructed in devotion to a falsely honored divinity Abrham didn’t know was false until the moment he heard the sound of all existing speaking.

In the same way that one can “hear” Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, these Italian architectural details, when they appear before you “here,” “in person,” very clearly and viscerally register (also) to the ear. That is partly because of a vicarious, formal association with the ear of the hearer. The form of these seashells is analogically similar to that of the human ear. In each of these instances in which we are invited to receive the sound of the Word of what appears before us, our hearing draws us upward. It edifies us. Edifying speech starts with hearing. Here, to hear and respond is the opposite of reaching and grasping for ascent. Architectural wonders from the contingencies of our Christian history and tradition thus themselves also appear as edifying guides. When we hear the sound of the angel’s speech, mirror images of penetrating death and unbinding liberation meet in their true center together with the image of Isaac resurrected, with the sound of rustling twigs, with the seeing and hearing of a vanquished teenage girl decades later vindicated into a life of dignified speech that edifies.

Such miraculously wondrous turns towards life require revealed guides. Because we are not transcendent individuals whose choices are not as free as we imagine and whose desired outcomes cannot ultimately or finally be controlled, because the elite cabal who controls everything really is taken up in and by vain fantasies, we all need such guides. And Cave’s story appears here for us as a guide that directs us towards the story we need to guide us. Abraham’s “Here I am” is also Cave’s existing. Abraham’s naming of his presence in response to the angel’s speaking his name aloud is Cave’s hearing the edifying truth of God rather than the lie of shamefully dark fantasies who make empty promises. And, as Abraham’s “Here I am” refrain makes space for the angel to respond to Abraham’s response by inviting him to hear and see the truth in the silent cessation of sacrificial violence, so also has Cave heard the full sound of the Word of Life. To hear the truth that this place and moment when and where “the Lord sees” is at once also the place and moment when and where the child victim of ritual sacrifice is seen and heard rather than defeated and slaughtered is to turn from the shamed silence of her blood’s cries heard from the ground to the wondrous awe of silent adoration rising to the heavens.^[1]

IT IS REVELATION TO WHICH WE RESPOND WITH SEEING AND HEARING IN AND OF A NEW WORLD

To have made this turn, to have responded to the speech of the revealed angel who reveals reality, then, is for the site and moment of sacrificial slaughter to appear instead as the site of new creation. This is to say that, for Abraham to go from having imagined the divinity who appeared to him as a terrifying Master from above who demands child sacrifice to obtain blessings of life and provision to, instead, seeing and hearing the true God of Israel who sees and hears, who is present with us in the appearing, is for Abrham to have been created anew. It is for Abraham to not only become a new person but to be created again. And, because creation is the domain of divinity rather than of the mortally human, Abraham’s turn that is also his creation is for us the disclosure that we are not the creators but are vulnerably in need of a guide. “His creation” here, of course, has a double meaning. His own creation is not his own but is his having been created. As we share his story with him, it also becomes our own creation. It tuns out that the man who crafts girls into the image of a chaos-serpent vanquished by a heroically victorious Master was telling the wrong creation story.

In the wondrous awe of this place and moment, we are given the gift of seeing that the guide we so vulnerably need is actually the Lord who sees and is seen. Our given guides are thus extensions into and through the course of historical time of the first guide. If we might be swept up into the contingencies of history by an elite cabal who controls everything, the Lord appears before us at history’s climax as also said history’s beginning and telos. Inside this beginning and telos, all such contingencies appear and find their place. This is to say that even the elite cabal who practices child sacrifices finds their proper place in the world atop Mt. Moriah. We are all characters in the script, and we all have parts to play. The question is of which characters and which parts.

Christ’s history climaxed on the same Mt. as Abraham’s. In our sharing in the stories of history’s vulnerable contingencies, that place and moment becomes the crux of our story, too. In Nick Cave’s Soundings, and in edifying architectural echoes of hearing and being heard, we hear echoes of the angel speaking. The guide of guides gathers our other guides up into himself for the pleasure of helping us to see, for the delight of revelatory gift. We are given to see that the gift is pleased to reveal himself at the very site and moment of slaughter.

By “pleased,” of course, I do not mean to say that he is pleased with the slaughter. Quite the opposite. He is the reason for Isaac’s resurrection from death’s binding. I mean to say, then, that His love is revealed to be such that he desires presence with us even in and at the site and moment his own slaughter. The site of Isaac’s resurrection is, after all, also the site of the slaughter of God in the flesh. When he appears again, we thus already know how to recognize him. We know we hear his voice again as the Epst&!n files appear before all to see. We know this, because he himself has been pleased to have revealed it to us. “Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘Father!’ And he said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’” – Gen. 22: 7 (NRSV)

SACRIFICIAL CRIES OF THE VANGUISHED AS ECHOES OF THE VOICE OF GOD

As the logic and flow of Jesus’ brother James’ words implies, it is Isaac, yes, but also Christ himself who is seen and heard in “the cries of the harvesters [that] have reached the ears of the Lord” (James 5:4). The presumed Master is being tested in a trial. The revelation is his trial itself. The girls victimized by penetrating shame are being vindicated by the true Master whose penetrated suffering is itself their endured purification. It is at this place and moment when and where we are given to see that he makes our sacrificial lifeblood his own. That it is He himself who is revealed here in the hearing of a sacrificed girl’s cries is why James’ very next words in chapter 5 of his letter – these particular words directed to the rich cabal of elites who fancy themselves the masters who presume to control everything - are: “You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have nourished your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you” (James 5: 5-6). Of course, this framing of girl sacrifice implies that it was not the Father who slaughtered the child on Golgotha. Instead, it was the fantastical idol of heroic victory by way of sacrificial blood.

If we are asking who plays which parts in the story, we do not see God’s solidarity with the oppressed. We instead are gifted with disclosure of God as the sacrificed child itself. In this version of the story, however, the central actor of the story does not slaughter another but submits to it. As Abraham and Nick Cave have responded to this image that appears as radically other in a world that seems to be constituted by the shameful silence of vanquished enemies sacrificially slaughtered by a heroic victor, so we, too, are invited. The invitation is life into a new world, one radically other from the world created by fantastical idols. For us to accept the invitation of life in a new world born of Revealed disclosure is to itself, like Abaham, respond as one created anew. And, to respond as one created anew in a new world is to have heard the voice of a God revealed to be radically other than the Master towards whom fantastical dreams reach and grasp.²

IN A NEW WORLD, WHAT PATH FORWARD DO WE TAKE?

To know what this response is, we need only to read and hear the language of the story. And, in the story, we find the prophetic forbidding of child sacrifice. God’s act of gifted disclosure constitutes revelation of a divinity whose act of creation in the moment and place of his own sacrifice constitutes the end towards which all child sacrifice moves and in accordance with which all child sacrifice ceases. The divine language that speaks the creation of a new Abraham is also the creation of a new world. Abraham’s birth is not only of himself but into a different world. As Isaac was resurrected into the new world that had come into order by the voice of a newly-revealed divinity, so is the sacrificial girl who was bound up to horse stalls in the dungeon of the banal’s Tower, the child who had previously only heard shaming insults. As Abraham is born into a new world, so is she if she shares in his story with him. To wit -

In the story, we also find the creator’s divine command to live along a trajectory that makes appear the revealed Lord who sees and is seen rather than demands sacrificial slaughter in order to obtain blessings of life and provision. Accountability at a systematic, institutional level is not the answer but is itself a response. This is to say that, if we manage to find ourselves in a world and a moment when and where true accountability happens, then we can know it to be a revealed response rather than a free choice whose outcome any of us accomplished or made happen. We know this, because we’ve already been given the Revelation. Epst&!n and Trump’s idolatrous fantasies that demand sacrificial blood not only give shape to but constitute a Mt. Moriah moment we are all now inhabiting. Many will of course blindly continue the slaughter. These devoted ones will continue to speak in confused languages as though they live in another world of their own making. As Abraham heard and responded in sacred awe that gives sight of a new world, we are also so invited. Who else will accept the invitation of and to wondrous awe? How about the vindicated girl?

We are all characters in the script, and we all have parts to play. The question is of which characters and which parts. Of course, then, the ceasing of slaughter on Mt. Moriah has profound implications for how we all relate to one another in everyday life. Adoration that rises to the heavens also takes up the form of devotion along a path. To inhabit a world created by the language of a divinity whose speech reveals his own caring presence of seeing and hearing is to relate to one another with the caring presence of seeing and hearing. And, if we ask about the ceasing of the ritual of child sacrifice in the specific context of an elite sex cult, then profound implications again arise, this time in everyday relations between men and women, or between men and girls. To inhabit a world created by the language of a divinity whose speech reveals his own caring presence of seeing and hearing among men and women, men and girls, means not only the cessation of ritual humiliation of the chaos-enemy but, instead, mutual relating in enactment of edifying care in response to the hearing and seeing of the One whose seeing and hearing creates a world made of faithful Love Incarnate. This is to inhabit the wondrous awe of Mt. Moriah. To simply love and dignify appropriately according to the decreed reign of properly ordered relating in mutual hearing and seeing in a given circumstance is not the final account. But it is itself to give an account of the story of the Epst&!n files. Who can give the final account? We expectantly await the Word again.