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  • The Moral Legacy of George Orwell

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    The Moral Legacy of George Orwell*

    Charles M. Swezey

    Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia

    Written in 1948, from whence its title is derived, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four has since been translated into sixty languages, and its total sales are thought to be in eight (!) figures. The response of the public to this book has become a cultural phenomenon. In 1984 it seems impossible to attend any gathering, read any newspaper or journal, or even watch television, without being confronted by Nineteen Eighty-Four. Everyone has an opinion—those who have read and digested the whole Orwell corpus, those who have read only Animal Farm or Nineteen Eighty-Four, even those who have read nothing by Orwell. Pastors, who may belong to any one of these groups, are asked to assess the significance of Orwell’s book, and appropriately so, for one task in interpreting the Christian tradition is to provide commentary on culture. Why do so many people ponder the meaning of Nineteen Eighty-Four! Public discussion expresses an awareness that our age is somehow different. To understand ourselves, we grapple with the distinctive features of our era. Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a measuring rod. It expresses, embodies, and speaks to our existence as creatures of the twentieth century. We have come to use it as a diagnostic tool to help us understand who we are in relation to the age in which we live. This article is an interpretation of Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Richard Rovere expressed eighteen years ago what has become very close to my own view.

    In the past decade, critics in large numbers have been drawn to Orwell’s work and have found him for the most part a thorny problem. The truth is that his work does not much lend itself to theirs. His novels were direct and fairly simple narratives in an old tradition. Their meanings are mostly on the surface. Orwell posed no riddles, elaborated no myths, and manipulated no symbols. Even Nineteen Eighty-Four offers limited possibilities for exegesis. One need only be alive in the twentieth century to grasp its significance.1

    Perhaps that statement is too simple. Certainly interpreters of Orwell differ. They run a gamut from those who think Nineteen Eighty-Four is realized in 1984 to those who see the book as the expression of a psychologically warped and dying man. Rovere’s statement, however, is the springboard for my considerations —one need only be alive in the twentieth century to grasp the significance of Nineteen Eighty-Four. My procedure will be to sketch portions of Orwell’s life, concentrating on his trip to Spain in 1937, as a context for his writings. In this task I depend upon the magnificent volume by Bernard Crick which is the definitive biography.2

    Page 9

    Orwell was born in India in 1903, the son of a low-ranking official of the British Empire and his wife. He was raised in England and attended a prep school on partial scholarship. He later recalled his experiences there with great bitterness, especially his discomfort with the school’s autocratic rule. However, he did well enough academically to gain admittance to Eton where he was not productive at all. He spent most of his time searching for his identity without success, and he graduated low enough in his class to prohibit further schooling. Like his father, Orwell served the British Empire. He was an Imperial Policeman in Burman for five years. His growing loneliness and desperation culminated in a rejection of imperialism. He wrote later, “when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.”3 Orwell rejected imperialism and returned to England in 1927 to seek his own freedom. He decided to become a writer and spent the next ten years of his life in diverse activities—a tramp among the underclass in London and Paris, assistant waiter in a hotel, school teacher, book salesman—all the while writing, writing, writing. He had published four books by 1936 when he was commissioned to write a volume about working conditions and unemployment in England’s industrial north. His commitment to “democratic Socialism” matured while writing The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), a kind of documentary which combined literature and reportage. As Crick observes, this genre expressed “both his sense of shock at things as they were and the moral seriousness of his new belief that society could be reshaped for the better”4 —elements which persisted the rest of his life. In “Why I Write” (1946) Orwell asserted, “What I have most wanted to do through the past ten years is to make political writing into an art.” Indeed, “every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism.”5 Homage to Catalonia (1938), Orwell’s account of the war in Spain, is the book which expresses most clearly his political values and commitments. Orwell went to Spain to fight against fascism and to fight for a socialist revolution. He discovered upon arrival several groups of militia, each drawn from various political and labor organizations. Orwell could not have cared less about the subtleties of Spain’s internal politics—he was there to fight fascism! Thus largely by chance he was assigned to one of the militias, the P.O.U.M. (Marxist Unification Workers Party). Orwell was enthralled to be living in what appeared to be an authentic workers’ state. After a period of inconsequential training, he and his colleagues were assigned to fight in a geographical setting which almost prevented engagement with the enemy. The opposing forces, armed with unreliable rifles, were stationed on ridges too far apart to be accurately traversed by a bullet. Moreover , the ridges were deep enough to prevent attack from below. “In trench warfare,” Orwell wrote, “five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. . . in that order, with the enemy a bad last.”6 That is too cynical. Ill-equipped, bitterly cold, often hungry, and usually filthy, Orwell’s group engaged in limited combat. After 115 days in the trenches, Orwell welcomed the opportunity to take leave in Barcelona. When he reached Barcelona, however, a civil war within the civil war

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    broke out. Following a series of complicated events, the P.O.U.M. was charged with starting this war, that is, with preventing and obstructing the revolution. The charge was not really true, and would have been news to the P.O.U.M. militia at the front. The lie served the interests of persons attempting to consolidate (nonrevolutionary) power. Meanwhile, members of the P.O.U.M. in Barcelona were being rounded up and placed in jails. Orwell discovered that the Communist Party did not support the revolution , but served the national self-interest of Russia. This self-interest included placing in power in Spain persons friendly to France. Orwell was outraged to see the revolution betrayed in the name of revolution, to be followed by excesses we have come to associate with totalitarianism. Some of the scenes in Homage to Catalonia are vivid. In the next to last chapter he returned to Barcelona again, to meet his wife. Unannounced, he strolled into a hotel lobby where his wife greeted him coolly. But let Orwell tell it . . .

    When I got to the hotel my wife was sitting in the lounge. She got up and came towards me in what struck me as a very unconcerned manner; then she put an arm round my neck and, with a sweet smile for the benefit of the other people in the lounge, hissed in my ear: “Get outl” “What?” “Get out of here at oncel” “What?” “Don’t keep standing here!” . . .She had me by the arm and was already leading me toward the stairs. . . .”What the devil is all this about?” I said as soon as we were on the pavement. “Haven’t you heard? . . .The P.O.U.M.’s been suppressed. They’ve seized all the buildings. Practically everyone’s in prison. And they say they’re shooting people already.” . . . Patiently she explained the state of affairs. It did not matter what I had done or not done. This was not a round-up of criminals; it was merely a reign of terror. I was not guilty of any definite act, but I was guilty of “Trotskyism.” The fact that I had served in the P.O.U.M. militia was quite enough to get me into prison . . . . Practically the law was what the police chose to make it. The only thing to do was to lie low and conceal the fact that I had anything to do with the P.O.U.M.7

    Orwell consistently used the word “nightmare” to describe his experiences in Spain. “You had all the while a hateful feeling that someone hitherto your friend might be denouncing you to the secret police. The long nightmare . . . had put my nerves on edge.”8 Again, “It is not easy to convey the nightmare atmosphere of that time—the peculiar uneasiness produced by rumours that were always changing, the censored newspapers, and the constant presence of armed men.”9 The experience in Spain was decisive enough for Orwell to write about it a second time. Here are two citations from “Looking Back on the Spanish War” (1942).

    In Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied by an

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    ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. . . . I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.” . . .

    What is peculiar to our age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written. . . .If the leader says of such and such an event, “It never happened”—well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five—well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.10

    Orwell’s experience in Spain did not turn him into a cynic. “Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings.” Yet in view of the force of fascism, England seemed to be “sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England.”11 The image conveys the need to awake. Orwell and his wife managed to get out of Spain and return to London, where he wrote Homage to Catalonia. It did not sell. Indeed, copies were still in the warehouse when Orwell died in 1950. He had not found the genre with which to communicate with ordinary readers. Animal Farm appeared in 1945. Though there was trouble finding a publisher , it was a great success. Orwell had found an artistic form which communicated with the ordinary reader. He gives an account in the preface to the Ukraninian edition.

    On my return from Spain I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone. . . . I saw a little boy. . . driving a hugh cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became more aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat. I proceed to analyze Marx’s theory from the animals’ point of view.12

    And so the allegory was born, “the first book,” Orwell says, “in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole.”13 Animal Farm, of course, is not anti-socialist, at least not by intention. It is anti-fascist. It is not against revolution, it is against the betrayal of revolution. Orwell declared that he wanted to make political writing into an art. He succeeded with Animal Farm. Did he also succeed with Nineteen EightyFour ! I approach this volume by way of brief observations about vision, dream, nightmare, satire, and negative vision. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a vision of the future. A vision provides a view which orients those who see it. Persons informed by a vision receive motivation and guidance. They are motivated to follow the vision, and they are guided where the vision leads. The vision of Nineteen Eighty-Four is in the form of a dream. A dream is a kind of human awareness which differs from ordinary consciousness. Dreams do not reproduce what is called the real world, but are related to it by exagger-

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    ating and simplifying images drawn from ordinary life. The vision of Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dream in the form of a nightmare. A nightmare is a frightening dream, accompanied by a sense of oppression or suffocation, which usually awakens the sleeper. One may even say that Nineteen Eighty-Four is a satiric nightmare—a way of holding vice and folly to scorn and contempt, again by simplification and exaggeration. The satiric nightmare if Nineteen Eighty-Four is a negative vision. Unlike a positive vision, which one is motivated to follow for guidance, a negative vision motivates by directing persons away from it. Common sense helps in approaching Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ask yourself, if in fact you had a nightmare which envisioned a satiric future, and woke up frightened, what would you do? If not in therapy, you would either dismiss the nightmare or ask what it might have to do with ordinary life. That puts it simply, but that is what Orwell intended. He wanted his readers to turn from his nightmare and direct attention to ordinary political life. If we do that, he will have succeeded in his purpose of making political writing into an art which communicates with ordinary readers. By political, Orwell did not mean party politics. He wrote in a notebook while composing Nineteen Eighty-Four, “Must not engage in party politics as a [literary] writer.”14 Orwell used the term “political” in the “widest possible sense” as the “desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they would strive after.”15 If these observations are accurate, there are two ways not to read Nineteen Eighty-Four. First, the book is not a prediction. It is a nightmare, a warning to awake and a call to public tasks. To ask whether Nineteen EightyFour is fulfilled in 1984 is somewhat beside the point, although it makes for fun and games in the parlor and on television. To ask how much of Nineteen Eighty-Four has been realized in 1984 also misses the point insofar as it helps evade a contemporary agenda. Second, to take the vision of Nineteen Eighty-Four literally is deeply problematic. Those who try to work deductively off the vision back into the present, misconstrue and misuse it. We need to know a great deal more about the world than is contained in the vision. For example, it is troublesome to take “doublethink” so literally that it must always be avoided. In a court of law, we judge a person innocent until proved guilty; we engage in doublethink .16 Again, it is troublesome to take literally the relation of language and thought in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The view that language determines thought is simply wrong. Less literally, if it is assumed that language influences thought, the results are both good and bad—good when alerted to the potential for mind control, bad when practiced by behaviorist psychology.17 To take literally the role of the telescreen (watching persons in their homes) overlooks the use of television as providing entertainment, and, incidentally, also overlooks its potential impact in “making the population progressively more stupid , incapable of sustained thought and concentration, and politically apathetic .”18 Examples could be multiplied. It is a mistake to take Orwell’s vision so literally that one is reduced to making deductive moves off it into the present.19

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    Orwell’s vision works if taken seriously but not literally. Persons take it seriously because they see in it a terrifying portrayal of distinguishing features of the twentieth century. We continue to read Orwell because we sense that he was correct in perceiving that the forces present in exaggerated form in totalitarianism are forces inevitably linked to the modern age. Totalitarianism had forerunners, but did not appear until the twentieth century. The social and historical conditions for totalitarianism were not present until the twentieth century. These conditions are still present, and that is what haunts us about Nineteen Eighty-Four. The images in the negative vision of Nineteen Eighty-Four should be taken as touchstones to direct and alert us to problems which require attention now. The moral legacy of George Orwell calls us to active and informed participation in the political arena—in the broad sense. In a democracy, this legacy requires cultivating those civic virtues which enable a republic to flourish—an active citizenry, informed on a broad array of issues which are so complex and ambiguous that they cannot be turned over to officials and experts. It is beyond my competence to set a full agenda, but here is a sample. People are hungry in Nineteen Eighty-Four and in 1984. What do we know about hunger and the conditions of hunger, in this country and abroad? What programs and policies, governmental and voluntary, are we for and against? And why? People are poor in Nineteen Eighty-Four and in 1984. What do we know about poverty and the conditions of poverty, in this country and abroad? What programs and policies, governmental and voluntary, are we for and against? And why? Freedom of information is questioned in Nineteen Eighty-Four and in 1984. What do we know about the Freedom of Information Act and its seven exemptions? Are we for them or against them, and why? What do we know about Executive Order 12356 which replaced Executive Order 12065 last August ? Are we for it or against it, and why? Military secrecy is present in Nineteen Eighty-Four and in 1984. What do we know about the fighting taking place in Guatemala? in Honduras? in Nicaragua ? in El Salvador? Are we for it or against it? Are we anti-Communist, as was George Orwell? Or are we for a revolution, as was George Orwell? What policies are we for and against, and why? The list could be extended easily. Problems in the political arena are enormous and increasingly complex. The question is whether citizens today can be informed and active in the formation of public policy. Orwell asks us to wake up, to turn from his negative vision and cultivate political virtues in a republican mode so that democracy can be sustained. That is his moral legacy. Should theologians offer a religious interpretation of Orwell? I think not. Certainly he should not be baptized as an anonymous theologian. To be sure, Christians give theological reasons for cultivating citizenship. But in the task of cultivating citizenship, Orwell, though not a theologian, is an ally. His writings inform us of the need, and may be sued by pastors to communicate about aspects of the Christian moral life. When Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-17 are held in one hand, Nineteen Eighty-Four may profitably be held in the

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    other. Nineteen Eighty-Four provides an interpretation of the age. It should be read as a call to active and informed citizenship. It may also be read as a chal­ lenge to provide a theological interpretation of contemporary society and cul­ ture. This type of portrait has been an important ingredient of the Christian legacy that is lamentably neglected today.

    NOTES

    * Adapted from a lecture delivered at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, 14 February 1984. , 1 Richard H. Rovere, “Introduction” in The Orwell Reader (New York: Harcourt Brace Jova-

    novich, A Harvest Book, 1956),xviii. 2 Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life (New York: Penguin Books, 1980).

    3 George Orwell, “Shooting an Elephant” in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of

    George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, 1968), 1:239. 4 Crick, George Orwell, 294.

    5 George Orwell, “Why I Write” in The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George

    Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1968), 1:5,6. β George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (New York: Penguin Books, 1966), 25.

    7 Ibid.,195,201.

    8 Ibid.,141.

    * Ibid.,189. 10 George Orwell, “Looking Back on the Spanish War” in The Collected Essays, Journalism

    and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (New York: Harcourt Brace Jova­ novich, 1968), 2:256-257, 258-259. 11 Orwell, Homage to Catalonia,220-22l.

    12 Orwell, The Collected Essays,2:211.

    13 Orwell, The Collected Essays,!:!.

    14 Crick, George Orwell,538.

    16 Orwell, “Why I Write,” 1:4.

    18 Barbara Allen Babcock, “Lawspeak and Doublethink” in On Nineteen Eighty-Four, ed.

    Peter Stransky (Stanford: Stanford Alumni Association, 1983),91. 17 Elizabeth Closs Traugott, “Newspeak: Could It Really Work?” in On Nineteen Eighty-

    Four, ed. Peter Stransky (Stanford: Stanford Alumni Association, 1983),134. 19 The purpose and function of a piece of literature should not be confused with the purpose

    and function of political, economic, social, and moral argument. Literature may alert us to the need for moral argument, for example, but it is not a substitute. It is also a mistake to ask: what would the historical Orwell have us do? As Irving Howe has pointed out, we really do don’t know (“1984: Enigmas of Power” in 1984 Revisited, ed. Irving Howe [New York: Harper & Rowe, Perennial Library, 1983], 17-18.) Moreover, this line of inquiry also switches the grounds of evidence. The merits of a political stance, for example, must surely be argued on grounds independent of whether Orwell would agree.

  • The Theater and Preaching

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    The Theater and Preaching

    Charles L. Rice

    Drew University Theological School, Madison, New Jersey

    I

    Someone once asked Samuel Miller, then dean of the Harvard Divinity School, where he would go to church in New York City to be moved. Miller confessed that he was at a loss to guarantee such a pulpit, but that he could recommend three plays. One could use such a story to suggest what is not true: that the pulpit is generally lifeless and in need of stimulation and material from such exciting quarters as the stage. To take a more positive view, we have only to keep in mind that this high view of theater came from a theologian and preacher. When we think clearly about what preaching is, at its best, and consider what drama is, essentially, then their affinity appears. One could give an article on this topic to show in theological and aesthetic terms what that affinity is. The subjects come readily to mind: drama as we know it in the modern world was born among the preaching friars of the middle ages; Christianity, by virtue of its sacramental and language-oriented theology , is particularly hospitable to the theater as a place where the ordinary human experience is both imitated and transcended; the liturgy and the staged play have much in common, in their use of time and space as well as in their combination of the tragic and the comic; the Bible’s preachers and storytellers, like the best of our playwrights, are given to imagination but not to sentiment (a prime example would be the parables of Jesus), to passion but not so much to parading feelings or piety; the best sermons, like the best plays—that is, those that have the greatest effect—do not preach. As the poet Yeats said, “Only that which does not cry out, does not explain, does not teach, does not condescend, is irresistible.” In the pulpit as well as on the stage, the play is the thing. In homiletics, or in trying to formulate the doctrine of the Word of God, we speak of the word-event, on the stage of the moment for which the playwright hopes, when every member of the audience comes and stands on the stage, as part of the action or as one of the characters. One could, following Tillich, develop these ideas in the context of a theology culture: since religion is the substance of culture and culture the form of religion, then obviously such a phenomenon of culture as the theater is of the greatest theological significance. But our interest here is in the more practical matter of taking the preacher to the theater and bringing the play to the pulpit . Toward that end, this paper will be a chronicle of an evening at the theater , of moving from that experience toward a sermon, the preparation of the sermon, and reconsideration of the whole experience. Practical matters and theoretical and theological considerations will appear all along the way.

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    π The Circle Repertory is just off Sheridan Square, and we were no sooner inside on a muggy August evening than we wondered whether for twenty-five dollars we couldn’t have found a more comfortable and cheerful spot some­ where uptown. But among the off-Broadway shows Balm in Gilead had had the best reviews. We entered past a dirty urinal and public-toilet graffiti only to find ourselves in a down-at-the-heels West Side coffee shop which had not been swept, it appeared, any more recently than Seventh Avenue out front. Our seats were front row center, which meant that we were in the middle of the action and soon to be approached by the monte men, smooth talking and flipping their three cards faster than the eye could follow. People around us lost a few dollars: it was just like being out on the street, especially as the cast of twenty-nine began to take over the coffee shop: prostitutes, pimps, transvestites, junkies and dealers, the new girl on the block, the mentally ill, and the just plain ne’er-do-well. Up on the wall was the usual menu, from burgers to breakfast, and such signs as “No Dancing” and “$1 minimum in booths.” To the right was the washroom through which we had entered, into which the street people were constantly trying to sneak, past the vigilant owner and the large bouncer/counterman. To the left, in shadows and one story above the stage, a by-the-hour hotel room. Though the play lasted more than two hours (the fact that several conver­ sations might be going on at one time made it seem longer), the story is quick­ ly told, what story there is. We actually do not learn much about these people at all, certainly not about their past. There is one extended monologue in which Darlene tells us about her life with Cotton, in Chicago, and we get some insight into what has brought her here. But for the most part all we see is broken, lost people coping as best they can on scraps of food and human inter­ action. The small plot revolves around Joe, whose ambition gets him involved with drugs and the mob, and leads eventually to his death in the booth where he and Darlene have become regulars. Death is a mild word for it: the mob’s man, in slacks and sweater, stabs Joe with a footlong hypodermic needle. The action is repeated three times. The play is relentless, almost without relief. One woman, almost comatose from heroine, spends the entire play except for one trip to the roof for a shot, hanging, half-on, half-off the stool, her hold on the counter as precarious as the life which screams and scratches around her. We see, as the play goes on, that she is everyone here, barely able to hang on, just waiting for the next fix, of one kind or another. Joe and Darlene could be Adam and Eve, and a couple of young lovers anywhere, when they take their clothes off and she rubs his back in the cool bedroom. And there is now and then a moment when someone lis­ tens, or they laugh. But for the most part, we are left with it, nothing closer to balm than a cup of coffee, memories, or a needle in the arm.

    Ill

    I tell my students in preaching that the surest way not to enjoy/experience

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    a play is to go to the theater looking for sermon material. What John Crossan says about the parables, for example, and about metaphor in general is true of drama:

    When a metaphor contains a radically new vision of world it gives absolutely no information until after the hearer has entered into it and experienced it from inside itself. In such cases the hearer’s first reaction may be to refuse to enter into the metaphor and one will seek to translate it immediately into the comfortable normalcy of one’s ordinary linguistic world. . . . One must risk entrance before one can experience its validity. (In Parables, 13)

    As with all of our experience, including that of the arts, we can turn metaphor into mere illustration, and if we move too soon in that direction, making of everything grist for the homiletical mill, then we will not actually go to the play. Crossan says that the difference between metaphor and illustration is that in the one case I am used by the metaphor, but illustrations I simply employ for one agenda or another. So, the play is the thing, and the first thing is to be there, as far as possible in the mood and expectancy of any human being. As one of my students put it: “Preachers, it would seem, need to live their lives like other people and then to make something of it.” On the other hand, we do have this vocation to preach which impinges on everything we do. On many an evening out the preacher will no doubt leave the theater—or perhaps this will happen in the midst of the play—thinking about how this might serve the Sunday sermon. In the case of a play like Balm in Gilead, the preacher may, at first, draw a complete blank. I came away from the play not a little depressed, ill-prepared to face the grime of that part of Manhattan, and far from inspired to the task of preaching. As almost inevitably happens when one of my theological colleagues is around, my companion asked, “Well, did you find a sermon in that?” I was grateful that I did not have to preach on the play that night, or even the next day. But as often happens, the play had its own way, and with time its characters and scenes re-presented themselves as powerful images of struggling, somehow surviving people. In this regard the stage is very like the pulpit: the best sermons are not easily summed up over Sunday dinner, reduced to so many neat points, easily assimilated ideas. It is the event itself—multifaceted, appealing to imagination, calling for deep participation—which has power. The marks of a great play, as of a compelling sermon, were all there: the theatergoer ‘s participation in coffee-shop life; the hard but real human images, the undeniable people; the unresolved situation, calling for some invading word, some transcendant presence, more than could be said or done then and there. So the play in resisting use moved toward redeeming metaphor. We could probably follow a rule of thumb: the more difficult the play to assimilate, the more promising for preaching. Experience with this play would confirm that. The title itself added to the difficulty: most churchgoers would expect something religious in a play of that title, and I found myself expecting, half hoping to hear someone like Mahalia or Ethel belting out the spiritual. But Lanford Wilson held back, kept our noses in the worst of it, gave us the

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    barest hints that he even knew the biblical setting of the phrase. It was only as days passed that I began to hear some of the lines as the scenes came back: Tyg, in an obscure conversation in the corner is telling someone that “they had a salve back there in Egypt that could cure most anything.” And in time the death of Joe, stabbed three times with a brutal needle, began to count too. So, the play stayed with me and led eventually to looking again at the familiar text in Jeremiah. With the play as foil against which to study the pericope, exegesis took on new life, certain motifs sprang to attention. For example , in Jeremiah 8:18—9:1, the prophet gives no suggestion that the calamity of the people is a punishment for sin; rather, he reveals his complete sympathy with his stricken people. Not only is the harvest past, (April to June), but the season of summer fruits fails also. The metaphor is one of desperation. Surely, says the prophet, there must be relief from somewhere, some medicine, some good physician who can help. Maybe from Gilead, the rough hill country east of Jordan, a place fabled for its healing ointment, could come some balm. In this case the play led the preacher back to Scripture, and the result was a second look at a well-worn text. This may often be the case with the arts; we are looking for the freedom-with-responsibility which will allow what Robert Raines call “raiding the Bible.” This possibility calls for even better knowledge of Scripture, a dwelling in the Bible which allows us to bring its stories, images, characters to a sermon which might well begin with a quite secular play. Taking such latitude calls also for even greater faithfulness in exegesis and theological reflection. Perhaps it is not so important that we always begin with the text as that once we are there, however we may have come to the text, we listen carefully, honestly. It may well be, too, that coming by way of a play makes for this deeper, more intense listening. In the precise meaning of the word exegesis is a leading out of the text: a play might well be one more means of accomplishing this leading out, by putting to the biblical tradition the questions of life in our time. Raines is to the point here when he says that “the Bible is just so much wind until we put up our lives as a sail.” In this case, Balm in Gilead provoked and enabled attentiveness to the text. This renders somewhat artificial the notion that every sermon must begin with the studious exegesis of a predetermined pericope.

    IV Sermon, Balm in Gilead From the beginning of the play until the end, there was no relief. To begin, we had entered the theater through the toilet, and once inside found ourselves sitting in the middle of the set, a down-at-the-heels West-Side coffee shop which had been swept no more recently than the New York streets from which we had sought refuge. Even the air conditioning could hardly cope with the muggy August evening. Before the play had even begun we wondered if we weren’t maybe too far off Broadway where we could have seen a nice musical. But if there was anything in the title at all, maybe we could count on Mahalia or Ethel breaking into all of this with a soulful, “There is a balm in

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    Gilead. . . .

    As if the eyesore set were not bad enough—it looked exactly like a thousand coffee shops that serve as home and hearth for street people—they were all there: prostitutes, pimps, junkies and dealers, transvestites, the new girl on the block, the mentally ill, and the just plain ne’er-do-well. From behind the altarlike counter, the proprietor, his big bouncer and a waitress with ornamental handkerchief, dish out coffee and burgers, try to keep them out of the washroom and to enforce the rules: “$1 minimum in booths,” “pay when served,” “NO DANCING.” Before the play had even started the monte men had tried their tricks on us, flipping three cards faster than the eye could follow, lifting a few bucks along the first row, as if $25 were not enough to pay for seeing yet more of the unwashed people and sleazy streets we had left outside.

    It was hard to take, this earliest play of Lanford Wilson, and I left the theater puzzling over what it had to do with the prophetic poetry from which the title comes. So I went back and read the passage from Jeremiah.

    (Read here Jeremiah 8:18—9:1)

    One of the interesting things about this is that there is no suggestion at all that the calamity which has befallen the people—and we do not know what it was—is punishment for sin. The prophet is simply expressing his deep sympathy, is weeping with those who weep, standing with them, or, as his fellow prophet Ezekiel has it, going down to the camp of the exiles to sit where they sit. The poem is their question, the crying of their hearts, as the prophet imagines it: “Is there no balm in Gilead?” Isn’t there someone, somewhere who can heal my people? The prophet puts it as a question, not as an affirmation, and in that is revealed the depth of his identification with these suffering people.

    As I say, we got no relief, and there was not a suggestion of a song by Mahalia. We left the theater with that unsatisfied feeling, like needing a shower, or a square meal. But it wasn’t a play to be left behind in at the Holland Tunnel, or to be washed off easily in hygenic suburbia. The characters kept coming back. Joe. He is young, wants to make it, gets involved with the mob and a fast buck in drug dealing. He ends up stabbed to death with a foot-long hypodermic needle. Curiously, the action is repeated, almost ritually, three times. Darlene, the new girl on the block, who in a long monologue remembers a failed love affair in Chicago and reveals her mixed hopes and fears in the city. The blonde, who listens for half an hour to Darlene’s story, just listens. The stool hanger. She is virtually comatose with heroine, hangs, half on, half off the stool center stage through the whole play, her hold on the counter as precarious as the life which scratches and screams around her. Tyg. Tall, handsome, sly. In an obscure conversation in the corner booth—frequently all of the cast of thirty are talking at once—he tells a nameless man, “They used to have in Egypt some kind of salve. It could cure just

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    about anything.”

    Now if we were to try to refresh Tyg’s memory of that story he so dimly remembers —a wonder-working salve somewhere down in Egypt—how would we put it. Right, Tyg, there was the prophet Jeremiah, whose people are suffering; they have gone through some terrible calamity and the future looks bleak. The salve you talk about was a famous remedy coming from the rugged hill country across the Jordan River, the balm of Gilead. In the face of insurmountable trouble, a wounded and broken people, Jeremiah the poet puts his people’s question: “Surely, somewhere, there is a remedy, a way out of this. There has to be a way, someone who can heal our hurt.” Surely, we would say, at the Mayo Clinic, or Sloane Kettering, or in Houston, there has to be a remedy. It can’t be hopeless.

    The answer is not forthcoming. Jeremiah, like his people, is carried away into exile and dies far from home. Hope goes unfulfilled:

    “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”

    And the prophet, weeping for his people, looks for signs of God’s presence:

    “Is the Lord not in Zion? Is her King not in her?”

    Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician up to our case? It is not that the New York street scene is worse off than a good many manicured suburbs, when you come down to it. It’s just that the question is so blatant there. I said that there was no relief, and that is close to the truth. There was the time when the blonde listened,

    when Joe and Darlene turned a leatherette booth into home and a payby -the-hour hotel room into loving intimacy. . .

    They do manage to laugh, and there is the old coffee shop itself and the family, of sorts, that it shelters. From their point of view, I suppose even the drugs and booze could be called balm.

    But finally, there is no healing, no final succour, no rescue. She is still on drugs, hanging on for dear life, and Darlene is going to end up like the worn out women around her. And when Joe gets it from the mob, a brutal needle jabbed three times into his young body, we see, if ever so dimly, that though there may never be any way out of this, in the midst of it is the one who goes with his people into exile,

    who does not leave us in these mean streets, who takes in his own body these wounds.

    Oddly enough, even though Mahalia didn’t come through, I found myself singing , right there in the middle of it all, as you probably would to, despite all the

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    evidence to the contrary,

    “There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole. . . .”

    V The tendency will be, in moving from a play like this to the pulpit, to foreclose prematurely in one of two ways: l)this play is not gospel, even antigospel , with no clear word of redemption, or 2) this play has some quite obvious , but here arcane Christian symbols which should be emphasized (the counter as altar, Joe’s “crucifixion,” the specific reference to the “salve in Egypt”). To follow either conclusion would block full participation in the drama and, in the long run, would not serve proclamation of the gospel. Instead , what is needed is openness, despite discomfort, toward a new experience , and sufficient patience in waiting for the play to have its own way. In fact, in this particular case it is only as one experiences the absence of gospel, the desperate situation of these people, that the prophetic poetry of Jeremiah opens toward proclamation. In other words, it is the experience of the play, albeit everything but soothing, which creates a new hearing for the familiar text. The preacher, then, in the confidence of the gospel and in the working of the Spirit, can sit loose to modern drama, open to the playwright’s creation. In the same way, the preacher can be light on her feet with the text, allowing the prophet’s poetry its way with us. There is no need to make everything fit, but finally to bring all to the feet of the Crucified One with something of the humility and reserve that we see in Lanford Wilson’s play. The cross is there, but it is not in its usual, taken-for-granted, gilded form.

  • Protagonist Corner

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    Page 28

    Protagonist Corner

    Mary Jane Cornell

    Columbia Presbyterian Church, Decatur, Georgia

    “What did you do today?” It was the standard opening line of the one-act play we produce almost every night. In that precious hour between pulling the casserole out of the microwave and rushing off to the next committee meeting, my husband and I take turns between bites retelling the events of the day. But that night, when it was my turn to recount the little successes and failures of that day’s laboring in the vineyards, I fell mute. What did I do today? My mind went blank. I must have done something. I felt tired. But what had I accomplished? I could not recall any logical order to the day. I could not account for how all of the last nine hours had been spent. There had been staff meeting, phone calls, some visits made, some magazines perused. I’d lunched at the college with some students, I’d checked out some books at the library, Fd selected some hymns for Sunday morning. But there were no signs of souls saved, nor new theological truths uncovered, nor the Kingdom come. There were still homeless people in Atlanta, injustices in El Salvador, wars in the Middle East, and missiles in Europe. Even Sunday’s sermon was unfinished ! What had I done? I was silent; the routine question for some reason this time had stirred an urgency to find some meaning in the day’s activity. As I pondered the question, playful images began to form around which the hodge-podge events of the day could cluster. A light began to break. “I suppose,” I said slowly, “it was a day of cross stitch, and aerobics, and jigsaw puzzles.” “Didn’t you go to work today?” Gary looked puzzled, for I had named three of my favorite forms of recreation. Cross Stitching . . . aerobic dancing . . . puzzling over jigsaw pieces . . . these were ways I spent my fun time. They weren’t the usual agenda for a day at the church. These activities, however, could serve as images for the routine, day-today , sometimes mundane work of ministry in the local church. They could help me recognize some worth in all that nameless activity that had equaled “today.” Cross stitching: tiny threads, slowly stitched into tiny crosses, that eventually form a picture. Sometimes it is a simple pattern—with one eye on the TV screen, during the nine innings of the ballgame one can produce a finished piece. Other patterns take weeks, or even months, to complete. Frequently the picture is indiscernable until all of the colors are stitched in their proper places. There is no way to cut corners, to skip stitches, or to hurry things along. To produce a masterpiece takes one stitch after another, on and on and on. . . . So much of ministry is done stitch by stitch. To sponsor a soup kitchen, night shelter, or day care center, to form a peacemaking task force, to maintain a Christian education program, is to be engaged in a lot of routine, daily, even

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    dull motions of maintenance and motivation. Much of the valuable work of ministry is almost unintelligible as we take a stitch or two each day. Sometimes we may never see the finished picture: the children of the confirmation class go off to college; the couples we counsel are transferred; or we move to a different parish before the refugee family arrives. But we keep making the phone calls, visiting the hospitals, preparing the sermons, in faith that God holds the frame for the finished picture. There is, too, a joy just in participating in a part of the creation. Aerobics: stretching, moving, panting—an hour of vigorous exercise for heart and muscles. But it is not much good to exercise only once, or to quit after just a week or two. Aerobic exercise requires commitment. Then after weeks you begin to feel better (and hopefully look better!). If you miss a session you can tell you missed something important. You discover you have more energy. Are there not some daily aerobics of ministry? Reading, study, prayer and meditation, talking theology with colleagues. It is easy to let that kind of exercise lapse, especially if Mr. Jones is having surgery, the phone keeps ringing , and the Kindergarten coffee is this morning. The temptation is to put it off until tomorrow. (“I can read that article later . . . I’ll skip that part of the exegesis this week.”) Sometimes emergencies require that we cancel these aerobics , but after too many tomorrows it starts to show. The congregation sees our sermons get flabby. We notice that when faced with the crises of faith we too quickly are winded and spent. The aerobics of ministry keep our hearts going; they help us stay in shape for the challenges. When recalling the events of the day we may not remember to list the magazine we read, the new book we purchased, or the time of prayer and meditation but when they are omitted we soon notice. Puzzles: In using jigsaw puzzles as an image for the daily routine of ministry , I think particularly of the surprises. After pouring over the puzzle for hours, suddenly you find the missing edge piece. Or, even though you were sure you tried that piece before, this time it fits. Or when you’re walking past the puzzle, with no intention of stopping, your eye falls on the little dog-shaped blue piece of sky you had tried to find last night. In the midst of, and often because of, routine events of ministry, sometimes unexpected pieces fit together and surprises bridge the gap between expectations and reality. The retired army colonel returns from the soup kitchen saying, “Jesus would have been a street person.” A father volunteers to organize the senior high youth group. A circle Bible lesson prompts a grandmother to write her senator protesting military budget increases. These puzzle pieces are not spectacular, and in the broad scope of history they may soon be forgotten . But I believe they are small pieces of the Kingdom, falling into place, and I greet them with cries of joy. Maybe that is what the routine, day-by-day, sometimes mundane activities of ministry are all about. They don’t take the place of the big events, or the corporate actions. But alongside the spectacular acts we are privileged to be involved in, those simple exercises, those daily routines can miraculously help change lives. Most conversions don’t occur overnight. Wednesday night suppers , church school classes, circle meetings, service projects can slowly reshape

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    lives and change ways of thinking. Although this look at ministry grew partly out of a sense of discouragement in not having accomplished “great things,” it is not intended as an apology for lacking a list of achievements. It is certainly not offered as an excuse for expending energy in silly, petty, worthless activity. It is simply an invitation to celebrate the mundane. It is an affirmation of faith that, even when the reply to the question, “What did you do today?” is as dull as last Saturday’s list of household chores, chances are it really matters. The cross stitching, the aerobics, the jigsaw puzzles of parish life all add up, even if we cannot see it today. And maybe, as we drift off to sleep at night, we will hear the affirmation , “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little.”

  • No Longer at Ease

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    Protagonist Corner

    No Longer At Ease

    William B. Wade, Jr.

    Westminster Presbyterian Church, Charleston, South Carolina

    Snoopy was sleeping peacefully on top of his doghouse. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Linus came walking by uttering a prophecy from Amos: “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion.” “Well,” thought Snoopy, “that ruins this day.” I was at ease in the suburbs of Charleston. It was a lazy, sunshiny day. Suddenly, a phone call came—not out of nowhere, but out of the Youth Ministry Office in Atlanta. South Africa seemed a world away from South Carolina; but I was being asked to go with ten other “young” people representing what was then the PCUS. I was somewhat aware of the social and political situation into which I would be heading. I had seen the film, Last Grave at Dimbaza, a damning portrait of the horrible injustices of the apartheid system. I had listened to exiled journalist, Donald Woods, say in 1979 that he predicted large-scale violence within four to five years. (We would be there just in time.) I had memories of riots in Johannesburg’s Black township of Soweto; and just before we left, the news media released vivid pictures of a bombing in Pretoria. All things considered, I was inclined to heed the proverbial saying: “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” However, things did not seem so bad once we arrived in South Africa. Customs officials at the Johannesburg airport smiled and waved us on through without even checking our bags. In the airport lobby, we were openly and warmly greeted by both Black and White Presbyterians. It did not even seem strange that our whole group stayed only in the homes of White people. I hardly noticed that Black people disappeared at night. Rather, what impressed me was that the Black people in our group were so graciously received into the White homes, more so than they would have been in much of Charleston. The first blatant signs of apartheid I observed were at a small service station along a rural road. The restrooms were segregated into “White,” “Black,” “Asian,” and “Colored.” But at least all groups had one to use. I remember a hot summer day in Decatur, Georgia, not so terribly long ago when I first noticed a sign over the water fountain at the ice cream shop which said “Whites Only.” It was the only water fountain in the shop. I am convinced that one could (and many do) visit South Africa and come away with the idea that the situation there is not really so bad. One could visit only the magnificent animal parks, the beautiful mountains and beaches, and the modern cities and resorts. But then one would see only a part of the story. Many South Africans themselves see only a part of the story. As one young Black man at a predominantly White youth conference told me: “These young people here do not have any idea how we live. They don’t know what we go through. They’ve never even been to my neighborhood.” The one White

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    South African who traveled with us over the entire six weeks and 5,000 miles went places he had never been, saw things he had never seen, and was changed by them—as I was—forever. It is not that South Africans are unaware of problems in their country. They are very much aware that they are living on the edge, the last bastion of White rule in Black Africa. For some of the people, the present situation is too frightening and too out-of-control for there to be any workable solutions. Therefore, like others throughout the centuries living under similar conditions, their Christian faith has turned ever more eschatological. Their focus is only upward. But to other South Africans, the problems of their country are seen primarily as the work of outsiders, communist agitators. They fail to see, as one White Presbyterian minister put it, “the terrible injustice of this society.” As early Dutch settlers circled the wagons against the Zulu and other tribes, so they still circle the wagons. They are set to fight it out to the end. A great many houses belonging to White people sit behind high walls and locked iron gates. The Dutch Reformed churches in every town are huge stone edifices which resemble fortresses. The clocks in their towers count down the hours to bloody revolution. Once we began to look around us, the problems of South Africa were obvious . They were not just Black and White, but involved Asians and people of mixed blood too. Injustices stood out literally in living color. Why were they not so obvious to more of the people who upheld the system and called themselves Christians? Strangely, the more we asked that question, the more the question was turned back on ourselves. American businesses in South Africa and American policies toward South Africa help to uphold the system there. We share in the guilt. But what we saw and heard in South Africa also served to open our eyes further to problems within our own country. While we were visiting with author-statesman, Alan Paton, in his house, the wise old man asked us a number of questions about America. He got few answers. Finally, he slapped his forehead and said, “What are you doing in this country when you don’t know anything about your own?” Surely, the problems in the United States are not nearly so blatant. At least the Constitution guarantees the rights of all citizens; and the majority living here are citizens. We have come a long way since the 1960s. Yet certain things are not so obvious to some of us who live here and call ourselves Christian. Maake Mosango, a Black minister in the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa and one with whom I had studied at Columbia Seminary, said to me that when he is in South Africa, because of his education and manner, people often think he is an American. They will treat him well—until they find out he is African. But when he was in America, in White churches, people often ignored him or had little to do with him—until they found out he was African. When I returned home, I went immediately to meet my family in Montreat at the Youth Conference. As I looked around, it struck me that the conference was practically all White. Then I recalled the words of that young

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    Black man at the youth conference in South Africa, and I wondered how much we knew about the lives of Black people in America, and how many of us had been into the neighborhoods of Black people, except to pass through quickly, especially at night. Later, on a train trip from Charleston to Rocky Mount, N.C., I became intensely aware of how dramatically the train tracks divided the neighborhoods in each small town. It was easy to tell who lived where. In the cities of America, Black people have not been forced out as in South Africa. But certainly many White people have fled to the suburbs. The words of a Black minister and professor of mine have haunted me since leaving seminary . He warned me: “Don’t get lost in the White suburbs.” One thing is sure, I am no longer at ease.

  • A Homiletics to Express Wonder

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    A Homiletics to Express Wonder

    Robert D. Young

    Westminster Presbyterian Church, Chester, Pennsylvania

    Christmas Day, and the lèctionary suggests Colossians 1:15-20. Colossians is tough at best, because the language keeps running off into mystery. I can’t get my mind around expressions like “the image of the invisible God,” “the first born of all creation,” “by him all things hold together.” To have to preach when you are not totally certain of the meaning is difficult. So Fm tempted to leave Colossians. It was in the lectionary last year anyway . Why not retreat to the Gospel reading for Christmas, the story of the nativity in Luke 2:1-20? I would be on more familiar ground. “And in that region there were shepherds abiding in the field …” People like that passage. It is familiar and seems easy to understand. Yet there is a phrase in the story that suggests the first hearers had as much trouble with the nativity story as I have with Colossians. The story indicates that all who heard the news of the birth wondered at what was told them (vs. 18), just as I wonder about those phrases in Colossians 1. Wonder. How do you express that in a sermon? How do you recapture that when Christmas stands on such familiar ground, and with hardly an angel in most people’s sky? Many sermons do not leave room for wonder because they try to explain everything. There is no room for further thought nor faithful doubt. If those sermons allowed a few questions to protrude, they might help the faithful stand at the doorway to the Savior’s birth, adoring, but still astonished at what we’re told. So let’s try again with Colossians. The passage is a hymn, says Eduard Schweizer. Poetry and imagination are at work—truth through hinting speech, not flat, rational, logical speech. “In him all things were created, visible and invisible . . . whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.” Visible thrones? These I have seen. But what are invisible thrones? Are there foreign powers in the universe such as those of Star Wars or The Return of the Jedil Is Yeats’ line true, with its dark question, “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Should I demythologize that eerie, extraterrestial stuff, call it nonsense? Yet to do so might lose some mystery the hymn points to, plus the sense of wonder, plus the sense of cosmic triumph, in that those thrones and dominions were created by him and for him. “He is before all things.” Well, certainly before me and my times. Was he before his own times? Before the days of Caesar Augustus, when all the world went to be enrolled? Before Abraham? Neanderthal man? Before the morning stars sang and the first trees of the field clapped their hands? Who is this really who so astonished the people at the manger, whom I so glibly feel I know when I set up my creche and sing carols? “In him all things hold together.” I am part of the “all things” and I have been held together. Those times when I was “beside myself,” I did not walk off

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    from myself and disintegrate. I can give the text a personal reference. But does the text want a personal reference? Maybe Colossians suggests that the “all things” which Jesus holds together are atoms and molecules, stars and far off galaxies. Maybe he is the power that keeps the planet from exploding and the human race from destroying itself. Jesus, the hope of the universe, who made cosmic peace by the blood of his cross. Does the passage hint at this? Colossians lends itself to questioning, which in turn heightens the wonder that is built into Christmas. Don’t try to work out all the questions in advance. The questions are part of the story. Fred Craddock has an apt image: that too many preachers wrestle with their text beforehand, solve all the questions, and only preach their conclusions. This, says Fred, is like boiling off all the juices and preaching the stain at the bottom of the cup. Let the ponderings show. After all, what we are dealing with, however familiar, will always be unexplainable , spoken with a drop of the jaw, a gasp, a shake of the head. Astounding, not fully clear, yet true.

  • Protagonist Corner

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    Protagonist Corner

    Martha Jane Petersen

    Villa International, Atlanta, Georgia

    When my husband and I returned in 1981 from thirteen years of missionary work in Ghana and Nigeria, we experiences what is called “reverse culture shock.” This occurred when we sensed that we were a bit foreign to America, and it to us. Some of our adopted culture had rubbed off on us, and we faced various adjustments. We saw our homeland and our church basically through African eyes. The differences between African and American Christians were startling, and these I want to share. Our two churches differ, I believe, over views and givens concerning time, money, and persons. In America, we view time equal with or more important than money. We spend money in order to save time. Secondly, our calendars and watches dictate our movements and our involvements. If an activity runs overtime, we complain or drop out of the activity. Thirdly, with the demands on our time at a premium, we schedule everything: when to eat, when to visit people (just to “drop in” unannounced is practically a no-no), when to take “time off,” when to make love, not to mention all our appointments in schools and businesses which run “on time.” The second area which differs is affluence. I cannot begin to describe how overpowering American affluence is to a missionary from the Third World upon his or her return. What we take for granted in our American churches is seen as sheer wealth in most African countries. This includes air conditioning, pension funds for ministers, no more than three of four charges for ministers, Sunday bulletins and church school materials, church libraries, automobile allowances (and simply automobiles owned by ministers), catered church dinners , presbytery help to finance new churches. All of this helps us in the U.S. to perform our mission better, but it says a lot about what our mission is and who we are. The third area of supreme difference is the lack of real focus on persons in our society and in our churches. Of course the time factor has limited our focus . Because we are so geared to clock-watching and because of many other commitments, we do not simply enjoy being together in worship beyond one hour. Not even a fellowship time after church draws very many to it, nor do midweek gatherings. Many in our congregations are nameless to each other. Further, what have we done to friendship when we ritualize it through signing “friendship books” passed along pews? In Africa, on the other hand, church on Sundays is a communal event, probably like in America a century ago. Here people learn about each other’s woes. There is intimate sharing and caring before, during, and after worship. There are also fellowship opportunities during the week, particularly among women’s circles which meet weekly. Here they sing, pray, study, and then visit the bereaved, the indifferent, the sick in their homes.

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    One main thing which encourages such fellowship is not being tied to time. Among educated Africans in cities, even, no one cares about a major expenditure of time in church activities. Worship begins not at the appointed hour, but when people are ready. It ends one and a half, or two hours later. The sermon may be forty-five minutes, there may be five to six hymns, and at least two offerings. A severe lack of funds also dictates the lifestyle of a congregation. It may meet for years on a porch or in a school while trying to build a building. Presbyteries have no funds to offer for new church building; the fund-raising is totally a do-it-yourself one. A minister may come to preach only once in awhile. In Kenya and Nigeria, I found that ministers have often thirty or more preaching points. Clergy are in short supply and lay persons take major responsibilities in church life. With no printed bulletins, the order of worship may change during worship if it needs to, and the announcements may take fifteen minutes. But no one seems to care. Churches are usually equipped with at least a small electric portable organ or piano, backless pews, possibly robes for the choir, and communion vessels. Windows are shuttered, floors are concrete . People own their hymns books and bring them to worship. Sunday school is taught to all ages in the same room, with no materials—just knowledge from the teacher. It often resembles a junior Sunday worship service, and may occur while the adults worship. Members participate in these services enthusiastically. Several people may be involved in the prayers and Scripture lessons. Then, when the offerings are taken, people go forward to deposit their offerings in large trays at the front of the church. Often lively African music accompanies the offerings, and all the congregation may dance and sing as they go forward. Members usually give generously out of their poverty, not out of abundance. African Christians are not at all reserved in expressing needs for prayer during worship. In fact there may be prayer or healing services during the Sunday worship where members walk up front to ask for prayers from the ministers and congregation. Sometimes a laying on of hands accompanies the prayers for the individuals. One would think that with all these deprivations the church in Africa would be struggling to survive. But the opposite is true. Christianity, including the Presbyterian churches, is growing there faster than the population. Churches are packed on Sundays: offerings, memberships, seminary enrollments are burgeoning. Their faith is expressed holistically with programs directed towards health, educational, political, and community needs. Christians look to their churches as the only source of hope and truth when under economic and political oppression. Denominations cooperate at various levels. Ecumenical churches, schools, and seminaries often exist because no one can afford denominational ones. Christians are infused with an apparent joy, Sunday through Saturday, as they experience a God who is real and present to them. The church in Africa is vital. The time has come for us to listen and to learn.

  • Church Growth Challenge to the Mainline

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    Protagonist Corner

    Church Growth Challenge to the Mainline

    by D. Cameron Murchison, Jr.

    Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia

    The tide is moving in, at least for the moment. The concerns of various evangelical groups are being listened to with a new attentiveness. The cause of Church Growth gains ready hearing for a variety of reasons, both good and bad. Yet despite this trend, it may be both possible and appealing for many “mainline” Presbyterians to try to wait out this episode of ecclesiastical history , looking for a day when things will be more like they used to be. Presumably this would include churches prospering without any concerted effort to attract members, a situation in which the culture reinforces church participation and thus relieves churches and church members of having to present the gospel to people standing outside. To wait for such a future, despite its appeal, would be a crucial theological error. For the tide whose power we are now feeling poses a crucial theological question to all who consider themselves mainline Presbyterians (or Christians, for that matter). The question is: what is the place of evangelism in the mission of the church? To keep the theological challenge clear, it is absolutely necessary to let “evangelism” have a very specific sense in this question, namely: persuading previously unchurched and unbelieving persons to adopt the Christian faith as their own and to embark on a life of committed discipleship in and through the life of a local congregation. In our insistence upon a broader notion of mission than simply inviting persons to Christian faith, we in the mainline churches have found it possible not to incorporate evangelism in this specific sense into our functional understanding of the church’s mission. Save for greater or lesser enthusiasm in support of international missions and an occasional overture to some cultured despiser or another, we have tended to focus the mission and ministry of the church on Christian nurture and social concern. While we do not have to be reminded that the latter emphasis on social concern was a hard won battle with a monolithic definition of evangelism, honesty compels us to admit that we have very likely overreacted. To put the matter in the most concrete terms, we have many times been engaged in social ministries of various sorts. Much rarer have been the occasions when our ministry in the church has led us into what could aptly be called evangelistic endeavors. To be fair, both to our experience and to the nuances which the Church Growth movement has given to evangelism, we can claim to have engaged in evangelism within the walls of the church, beaming sermons to persons whose level of Christian commitment was admittedly quite tenuous if not openly lacking. And once or twice, usually in connection with pastoral ministry to someone with already existing church connections, we may have found ourselves bearing a Christian witness to someone we perceived to

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    stand clearly outside of the Christian community. But rarely have we self-consciously made it a priority agenda item for a church in which we have been involved, to undertake an overt, well organized and conceived, evangelistic ministry. A number of factors could be cited as contributing to this state of affairs. Some possible excuses are even forthcoming from the Church Growth literature , including the possibility that we have not been given gifts of evangelism or the possibility that our own experience of redemption has carried us so far beyond the general experience of most non-believers that the odds of our making meaningful contact with them is meager. Yet such excuses can only function in relation to the specific ministries which we engage in personally. They do not justify the broader fact that in almost no level of our ecclesiastical involvement , have we made evangelism a significant factor in our functional understanding of the mission of the church. To come directly to the point, the challenge of the Church Growth movement to mainliners is that we either fish or cut bait on this point. We owe it to the integrity of our own life in the church that we face up to the paucity of evangelistic endeavor of any sort in our pursuit of the church’s mission. No longer can we in good conscience argue that we are seeking a bifocal understanding of mission: evangelism and social concern. The issue for us is whether we can theologically justify the functional endorsement of nurture and social concern without any specific modes of evangelism as the correct understanding of the mission of the Christian church. Functionally evangelism is not a significant aspect of the mission of the church, at least in the North American context , for mainline protestants. The question is whether we are willing to own that fact publicly and justify it theologically. The question should not be regarded as a simple matter. A whole range of sensitivities to the autonomy of other persons, the values of other religious traditions, and the tolerance rightly prized in a pluralistic society bear upon the question. Nonetheless, it seems inescapable that we are obliged to trouble through this matter. Proponents of Church Growth are clear that the primary mission of the church includes evangelism. They may vary in the ways in which they link that element of mission to the element of social concern. Mainliners are clear that the primary mission of the church includes social concern, and they vary in the ways they link this element of mission to the element of evangelism. But in most cases the linkage is more rhetorical than factual. We in mainline churches need either to drop the rhetoric or step up the programmatic activity.

  • More Questions Than Answers

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    Page 16

    More Questions Than Answers*

    William Watty, United Theological College of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica

    The secret things belong to the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever. (Deuteronomy 29:29)

    About four months ago there appeared, in successive issues of the Sunday Sun, a discussion between eminent psychiatrists in this country on the relationship between religion and mental health. In her contribution, the chairperson of the Jamaica Psychological Association, Dr. Ruth Doorbar, a self-confessed agnostic, is reported as having said:

    . . . I feel that if God does exist (I am an agnostic) he is kind of wicked. Look, he has made humans with a mind that wants to find the answers to ultimate questions like “Why am I here? Is there any purpose for human life and the universe?” And, “How did everything begin?” So we have a mind that can ask these questions, but we are so limited that there is no way we can finally know the answers.

    I am not sure that this shrewd observation of Dr. Doorbar has disposed of the question of God. I am sure that it has not disposed of the questions which have been agitating her. I don’t know that, if we had answers to all of these questions given to us ready-made and in advance, we would be more human than we are. I rather suspect that if that were the case, the human mind would have atrophied long ago and there would have been no psychological association for Dr. Doorbar to chair! It is almost as if there was something undesirable in secrecy, that nothing should be held in abeyance or in reserve from human scrutiny; that there was some kind of moral obligation on the part of God, as well as of men, to reveal everything that they happened to know; that there was nothing wrong in the invasion of privacy and to withhold any kind of vital information was tantamount to a crime. I would like to suggest that all of this is misleading and based on wrong assumptions, and that if these assumptions were correct, we would not become more human but infinitely less so, and life would soon become uncomfortable for all of us. Even in our ordinary human relationships, there are things revealed and there are things secret, and it could become quite intolerable if each of us had a solemn duty to reveal everything that we happened to know, and the rest of

    *© 1983 From The Caribbean Pulpit-An Anthology, C.H.L. Gayle and W. W. Watty, editors. Reprinted by permission of the editors. Copies of the book may be obtained from the United Theological College of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica.

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    us had an incontestable right to pry into everything we had a mind to. You see a couple living together, and from what you know of each as individuals , you might well wonder how they are getting on. First of all, it is probably none of your business, but that’s how we are. And they will tell you, about themselves and their life together, what they wish you to know. But it doesn’t add up, and therefore you are still unsatisfied. So what are you going to do about it? Are you going to eavesdrop or spy on them? Are you going to spring a visit on them suddenly and catch them unawares? Are you going to plant a bug or tap their telephone? No! You respect their absolute privilege of privacy. Their secret is theirs and it is sacrosanct, and you must make what you can of what they wish you to know. That’s how it is, I’m afraid, and that’s how it must be. There are things revealed and there are things secret. It is sick people who feel that they must expose themselves to all and sundry and reveal their inmost thoughts to every passerby. It is a sign of immaturity, of disrespect for others and of disrespect for yourself, not to be able to distinguish between the things that can be revealed and the things that must be kept secret. A chatter-box is not necessarily a saint or even a hero. Indeed there are things about yourself that not even you will know. Sometimes it is left to others to tell you. Sometimes not even they will know. Introspect as you like. Navel-gaze for as long as you please. Visit ever so many psychiatrists . Stretch yourself out on ever so many couches, you will remain a mystery to others and to yourself because that’s just what you are. Thank God for it. When someone says to you, “I don’t understand you,” take that for a compliment! Why should they? “I will praise you, O Lord” exclaims the psalmist , “for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. . . . Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it . . . ” (Ps. 139:6, 14). So much about myself I do not know. Enigmas, the outlines of which I can barely trace. Depths of my being that I cannot fathom. Heights of possibilities that I cannot comprehend. And it is all of this, the revealed and the secret, the commonplace and the mysterious, the known and the unknown, which make the human being. And for me to keep secret what should be revealed is bad. It brings out the worst in others. And to reveal what should be kept secret, is also bad. It brings out the worst in me. The secret things belong to the Lord our God. And that is a far more meaningful and far more liberating word which comes to us from Holy Scripture . Secret to us, but known thoroughly to Him who knows our downsittings and our uprisings, who understands our thoughts afar off, who compasses our paths and our lyings-down and who is acquainted with all our ways (Ps. 139:13 ), and who is therefore far stricter with us, and far more merciful to us than we are to each other or to ourselves. He understands what He has made. He knows the works of his hands, “I know you” is the message which resounds throughout Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer. 1:5); “Underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deut. 33:27); “Thine eye did see my substance whilst as yet there was none of them and in thy book were all my members written” (Ps. 139:16). The secret things belong unto the Lord our God, and therefore there will

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    be more questions than answers. And what is true of the mystery of our being is equally true of the mysteries of our existence. There are things revealed and there are things secret. There are many questions to which we shall have to answer for a long time “I don’t know.” “How did everything begin?” is Dr. Doorbar’s question. Why is it that it is on this planet that human life and reason appeared? Or is there a duplicate of this planet somewhere else in space going through the same processes and the same mutations as this one? And do I have a double somewhere out there, doing precisely what I am doing now, saying just what I am saying, referring to me as I am referring to him? I don’t know. The secret things belong unto the Lord our God. And what about the contradictions of our experience? Why is it that it is we, human beings, who have a thirst for happiness and well-being, but who are dogged by pain and misery and misfortune? Why is it that just when we would like to think that this planet on which we live is safe and habitable, then there is a movement in the earth’s crust which sends tremors up to the surface and sicken and decay and die? What lies beyond the grave? What becomes of those whose remains we hide in the earth? We may speculate and dream and hope, but what do we really know? There are more questions than answers, because the secret things belong to the Lord our God. This is what, I gather from Dr. Doorbar, drives people to atheism and agnosticism . It isn’t that becoming agnostic brings the answers to these questions any nearer. It is rather a kind of protest about their right to know, a quarrel with the One who is responsible for this unsatisfactory state of affairs. He ought to make everything clear. He ought to answer our questions. He owes it to us. Is it really what atheism is all about? A theism up in arms? A theism in protest? Like the school-boy who flies into tantrums and is angry with his teacher because she knows the answers to the questions which baffle him? So he concludes that there is no teacher before the class, but only a monster. The secret things belong unto the Lord or God, and because we are not gods but merely human there will be more questions than answers. But the second part of this verse from Deuteronomy is just as powerful and just as important. If there are secret things which belong to the Lord our God, there are nevertheless some answers and they belong unto us and unto our children forever. We are not left in total ignorance. We are not shut up in gross darkness. We have light enough for our way. There are some things which we do know, and what is more, they are quite enough for us to be getting on with. This planet is not useless because there are earthquakes, or hurricanes , or epidemics in diverse places. The human race is not completely written off because there are wars and atrocities and rumours of wars. Out of this same fallen race have come amazing acts of heroism and self-sacrifice, goodness , uprightness and clarity. Over this same threatened planet the sun shines daily, the rain falls, the earth bears fruit of itself, grass grows for cattle, food for the use of man. Civilizations have risen from the dust. If there are diseases, there are medicines. If there is crime, there is law. If there is need, there is generosity. Things have been revealed and they are quite enough to be getting on with. These three score years and ten that we have—or more, or less—they do

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    not become pointless because they appear to be so brief under the span of eternity or because we do not know what happens afterwards. No! There are things revealed. We know enough of what pertains to life and godliness. We know enough to make our calling and election sure. We know the reality and the extent of our freedom, the nature of our obligations and our responsibilities . We know our station and its duties. We know good from evil, right from wrong, we know what is required of us. The things secret are no excuse for being less human, less concerned, less responsible. We know that faith, hope and love abide, because they are worthy of human devotion. We know that indifference and self-centredness and resignation have no future because they starve the human spirit. “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Mie. 6:8) There is enough revealed for us to be getting on with. I know that from him to whom much is given much shall be expected. I know that whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap. I know that he who sows sparingly shall reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully shall reap also bountifully. I know that God is not unrighteous to forget your works and the love that you showed towards his name in that you ministered to the saints and still do minister. This is what we have, they belong unto us and to our children and they are quite enough to be getting on with. And one day a man appeared in Galilee, the son of a carpenter. Many things that are commonplace to us were secret things to Him. He knew nothing of electricity or aircrafts or satellites. He knew nothing of contraceptives, or antiseptics or chloroform. He did not know the New World or the Caribbean or Jamaica. He could never have got a B.A. or a B.Sc. He could never have been a graduate from this or any other university; but of Him it was said in a voice which spoke from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him” (Matt. 17:5). And what was his reputation? “He went about doing good, and healing those who were oppressed” (Acts 10:38). And what did He say? “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted , to proclaim liberty to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bound” (Luke 4:18). “I am the Bread of Life. He that cometh to me shall not hunger and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). “I am the light of the world. He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). More questions than answers, but lack of complete knowledge is no excuse for falling short of full, meaningful, responsible, positive living, for in the final analysis we shall be judged not by what we did not know, but by what we knew, and did not do. For, if you are not getting on with what you know, what proof do you have that you will get on any better if more and more secrets are revealed to you? The New Testament has the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), but I am afraid that in our various interpretations, the main point has often been missed. It is not so much the indifference of the rich man to the poor man at his gate, nor is it their contrasting destinies in the other world.

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    The main point is the little dialogue between the rich man in hell and Father Abraham about the five brothers whom he pre-deceased. He wants Lazarus to be sent back to them as an emissary from the secret world of the dead to give some mysterious signal of what things are like on the other side so that they may believe. But Abraham says, “No, there will be nothing weird, nothing bizarre , no necromancy. They have enough to be getting on with. They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them and if they are not getting on with what they already have, they will not believe even if one should rise from the dead.” And lest we miss the application, we are the five brothers of the rich man in hell. You to whom we say farewell tonight, whatever it is that you do not know, whatever else is left for you to know, there is enough for you to be getting on with. The things revealed belong to you and to your children forever. Martin Buber in his book, Tales of the Hasidim, relates the story of a young disciple who wanted to tell his teacher about his inner torment but he could not find the courage. One day when he could hold back no longer, he ran weeping to his teacher who asked him what was the matter. “Here am I,” he cried, “alive in this world, a human being created with all my five senses, but what it is that I was created for, or what good am I in this world I do not know.” “Little fool,” the Hasidic teacher replied, “That’s the same question I have been carrying with me all my life. You must come and eat the evening meal with me.” There are more questions than answers. Indeed there are no neat, pat, ready-made answers to life’s most vital, urgent and significant questions. They will remain questions all life long. And far from pointing to the wickedness of God, they only prove his wisdom and his goodness. As long as those questions remain, the human soul and mind will not atrophy but will grow and mature until we know even as we are known. In the meantime there is enough to be getting on with, and the truth of our religion will be proved not in the accumulation of knowledge but in personal relationships, how we treat each other, how we respect each other, how we love each other, how we share with each other. Even in the twilight of our times, we can still say, and must know how to say, to each other, “Come and eat the evening meal with me. Come and share my scanty store. Come and share my dreams, my hopes, my advantages and my adventure. If they are mine, they are yours. If they are yours, they are mine. The things revealed. They belong unto us and unto our children forever.”

    Sermon preached at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, on the occasion of the university valedictory service, June 15, 1980.

  • Preaching at Pentecost: Is There Unity in the Spirit?

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    Preaching at Pentecost: Is There Unity in

    the Spirit?

    Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Ga.

    There is a clear imbalance in the distribution of significant feast days in the church year. We move rapidly from Advent through Christmas and on to Epiphany. Barely is there time to catch our breath before Lent begins. Holy Week and Easter follow quickly. Many protestants skip quickly over Ascension , but then Pentecost arrives. Six months—more or less—of the calendar year are gone. But now, Pentecost Season is upon us. Granted that Pentecost itself is obviously significant, and we may even figure out something intelligible to the concregation and to ourselves for Trinity Sunday the next week, but we are still faced with almost six months more of Pentecost Season. For many pastors, that is a long, blank period with little unity or coherence. There is some justification for this feeling. Pentecost Season—earlier called “Trinity Season”—is an elastic time period, holding the Easter Cycle past to the Christmas Cycle of the next liturgical year. It can vary by several weeks, depending on how early Easter has fallen. It probably could be lessened by a few months, and the structure of the year would remain untouched. It is as long as it is because that is the space created in the calendar by the distance between Easter and Christmas. There is no other rationale. At the same time, historically, the church has used this time period very well. There is a coherence to the Pentecost Season. The lectionary texts selected for the time show this. The coherence is more obvious, however, if we know the theological themes that are intended to be present. One further issue needs to be mentioned. Though this half year of Pentecost is somewhat bereft of days of liturgical significance, it is rich with national holidays and other secular celebrations in the United States. Father’s Day and less frequently, Mother’s Day often fall on Pentecost. This often presents an emotional conflict for the minister. More important, the Reformed tradition has insisted that the church take note of significant national holidays. Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Election Day, and Thanksgiving all can fall during the Pentecost Season. These days may break the seeming monotony of the liturgical season, but they may also interrupt any unity that has been established unless some connection is made between the national celebrations and what the church understands to be the importance of Pentecost. With all of this in mind, let us look at the theological coherence of the season.

    The Theological Coherence of the Season

    The third section of the Apostles’ Creed states: “I believe in the Holy

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    Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” These are not a list of miscellaneous items of belief that were left over from the first section of the Creed. They are all somehow related to the work of the Holy Spirit. On Pentecost Day it is clear that the church is the creation of the Holy Spirit. The communion of saints is in part a description of what the church is. The forgiveness of sins is also brought to us by the Spirit and through the church. The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting also are the culmination of the work of the Holy Spirit in us. It is the way in which the church militant is finally transformed into the church triumphant. There are two days of particular liturgical significance that occur late in the Pentecost Season, and that show clearly some of the meaning of the whole season. They are World Communion Sunday and All Saints Day. The first stresses the catholic or universal character of the church in its global character. The season stresses the unity of the church throughout time, the link between Christians who live now and the faithful who have gone before. It is unfortunate that this latter emphasis has been eliminated from many of our churches and Reformation Day substituted. It is possible to combine them, but the total elimination of any reference to the oneness of the church throughout all time lessens greatly our comprehension of the communion of saints. The oneness of the church, then, is of prime significance in the Pentecost Season.

    The Lessons

    The majority of the season, however, is far less specifically related to the church. In the lectionary now in use, twenty-six Sundays will use passages from the Gospel of Luke, in order, from the 7th to the 23rd chapters. In terms of the narrative material, this means that the lessons cover material from Jesus’s ministry. Most are teachings that show what discipleship means. The danger is always that these passages will be dealt with in a totally individual fashion, reducing the meaning to specific virtues that Christians are to have. The passages gain in significance if they are seen as ways in which the church is to respond, as corporate virtues rather than as private ones. For instance, Luke 12:13-21 is the passage listed for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost. It concerns the rich man who built bigger barns for his harvests, only to die and leave all of that behind. There may very well be ways in which that can be preached to individuals. We all need to hear that message. But what would it mean to a congregation—as a congregation—especially if it were clearly dealing with the budget of the church? The personal application to individual Christians might be taken much more seriously if Christians could see the church as an institution set an example. The last few lessons of the season stress a more apocalyptic theme, or at least speak of the presence of the kingdom in Jesus’s own presence. We shall return to this characteristic of the close of the Pentecost Season later. Before leaving the Gospel lessons, however, a few other comments may be helpful. Obviously, there is need for selectivity in taking relatively few lessons from so many long chapters in Luke’s Gospel. Much has been omitted from the

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    lectionary. Sometimes this is because the material really fits in another season. But often it is simply eliminated all together. The preacher may wish to look at the chapters as a whole, and note what has been omitted from an lesson. In these particular lections, there is a clearly discernible tendency to include very familiar passages and leave out strange ones that are rarely dealt with. If the preacher has been through the lectionary several times, it might be good to adapt the lectionary this time, and preach on some portions of the Gospel that otherwise might never be heard by the congregation—or preached by the pastor . As part of the unfamiliarity, most of the passages having to do with demons are avoided. Pastors may be grateful for that omission! However, the struggle of Christians against evil in the world is thereby also avoided. For instance, the entirety of the 8th chapter is eliminated. It begins with the involvement of many important women as disciples, but one had seven demons. It goes on to the Geresene demoniac, and concludes with some strange healings . Yet what power there is if the church knows the character of the Lord who has such authority. This is necessary for us to know if we are to be willing to enter into any struggle with evil in our world. A good hermeneutic is needed, clearly, but the avoidance of these passages for the entire season leads to a distorted view of discipleship, one that does not really include an engagement with powers of evil that are beyond our strength but clearly under the dominion of Jesus who is the Lord of the church. In general, the Old Testament lection has been chosen with the Gospel lesson in mind. For the 11th Sunday after Pentecost, mentioned above, a passage from Ecclesiastes has been selected to go with the one about the rich man and his useless new barn. The Ecclesiastes verses, 2:18-23, speak of the vanity of saving things for someone else to inherit. It is not clear, however, why the selection ends before the 26th verse. The Old Testament lesson may often be expected to be quite secondary to the Gospel reading. If the sermon is to be taken from the Old Testament reading, the preacher may need to use some judgment as to where it begins or ends, or when it becomes primary rather than secondary. The Epistle lesson may or may not have any clear link to the other readings . Often there is an attempt to give a good selection from various epistles, with some order involved in their presentation. For instance, in the C cycle, there are six lessons from Galatians, followed by four from Colossians, four from Hebrews, one from Philemon, and seven from the Pastoral Epistles. The continuity that is involved here is not interrupted in order to find an Epistle selection that is more appropriate for the Gospel lesson that has been chosen. However, because of the character of the Epistles—that they in general have to do with the life of the church—there is often a connection that can be made. If these selections are to be the dominant ones for the sermon, the exact beginning and end may also need to be examined. There is a further characteristic of the Pentecost Season that is often overlooked . Traditionally, the close of this season meshes well with the beginning of Advent. The means by which this is done is the emphasis on the Second Coming of Christ. The beginning of Advent includes this theme, as do the last few weeks of the Pentecost period. Specifically, in Cycle C, Sundays 24 through

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    27 stress this in the Epistle lessons from 2 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians, the Old Testament passages from Malachi, and the Gospel sections from Luke. Usually these are passages that imply the nearness of judgment as well as of salvation. They put a seriousness to the whole question of how we live our lives as disciples and as the church. The Pentecost Season ends with a world of judgment on our lives, preparing us again to be aware of our need for a Savior, a theme picked up by Advent. The last Sunday in Epiphany has the same emphasis, and is used if necessary for an additional Sunday.

    Planning for the Whole Season

    If one were to plan for the whole Pentecost Season at one time, the unity of the period could more readily be indicated. For instance, the general movement of discipleship toward judgment could be introduced more gradually. The character of the church as one body could be emphasized in October, beginning with spacial unity on World Communion Sunday and concluding with temporal unity on All Saints Day. In addition, such emphasis on All Saints would make a fitting beginning for the increased apocalyptic or at least eschatological character of the last month of Pentecost. Thanksgiving Day comes in the midst of this time, and might be improved by the awareness of judgment that the time involves. In fact, the old hymn “Come, Ye Thankful People Come” combines the thankfulness for the harvest with the awareness of God’s harvest which is the Day of the Lord. Having spent much of the discussion on the last portion of the season, let us conclude by looking again at the start of the season. Pentecost Day is the culmination of the Easter Season. The resurrection has occurred. The work of Christ has been accomplished, as far as the earthly ministry is concerned. It has reached the triumphant conclusion in the ascension . Now the Holy Spirit is sent and the community of the church is empowered . In one sense, then, Pentecost Sunday stands as the finale of the previous season as well as ushering in the new one. It needs to be planned for then in regard both to what comes before and what comes afterward. The Sunday following Pentecost—Trinity Sunday—may need to be emphasized more clearly in our day than in times past. There is so much confusion in the minds of so many that a sermon helping to show the meaning, even if not mentioning the doctrinal formulation, would be useful. Otherwise, it is quite likely that the impression can be created that Jesus is now finished, and the Holy Spirit has taken over. All the significance of the Risen Jesus as Lord of the church, which would help enormously in preaching the Gospel passages for the next several months, would therefore be gone. The stress on the Trinity assures us that the work for Christ continues, even as the work of the Father is still in our midst. The Spirit has not totally replaced the others, though the gift of the Spirit to the church is a new beginning in the work of redemption in the world. With some planning, what might otherwise be half a year of topical sermons , unrelated to each other, can be brought back in to the great sweep of the liturgical year.

  • ‘Who More Than Self Their Country Loved…’: Biblical Sacrifice in the American Perspective

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    Page 8

    “Who More Than Self Their Country

    Loved . . .”: Biblical Sacrifice in the

    American

    Perspective

    John Kuykendall

    Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama

    O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife, Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God their gold refine, Till all success be nobleness And every gain divine!

    I

    The most mysterious of all religious rituals is the act of sacrifice. It is also, in most respects, the most remote from our modern experience. Except for occasional experiments or calamities, we tend to look upon worship as a fairly stainless and antiseptic business. Certainly we do not come together expecting sacral slaughter; the gore and the flames and the strong aromas of animal offering are not a part of our usual memories or expectations. But the fact that we believe ourselves to have come beyond—or at least to have abandoned—the use of literal sacrifice as an act of worship does not necessarily indicate that we have ever been able to understand it. Students of comparative religion have done their best, and some of their conclusions are quite revealing. They tell us, for example, that one key element, almost universally , is the role or function of blood. The blood is always the equivalent of life, and however it may fit into the performance of the individual ritual, it is presumed to possess a special potency and holiness which is not to be found in the more ordinary substances of our material world. It seems clear, further, that we can isolate some typical motivations for sacrifice: to appropriate the vitality or life force of the victim; to give the deity food, or induce its aid or blessing; even to move through the offering to communion or union with the god or gods. The intention, in many religions, is openly stated in the ritual itself, so that we need have little uncertainty about the objective motivation. But to say all of these things is not finally to say that we can understand. Sacrifice is still a mystery, and objective intention and subjective motivation are two quite different things. Sacrifice is a mystery, and even in its biblical setting—both Old Testament and New—it should give use cause for wonder. The children of Israel were nothing if not attentive to the rituals of sacrifice ; and despite the prophets’ warning, regular and redundant, that their sacramental system had its shortcomings and its liabilities, they clearly believed

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    that God had ordained the practice as one of the ways in which they might maintain a continuous relationship with him. They made sacrificial offerings in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons—gratitude, communion, the quest for forgiveness of their sins known and unknown—and they did so, essentially, because it was their conviction that Yahweh had not restricted himself to treating with his people “in historical deeds and in the gracious guidance of individual lives,” but that in the institution of sacrifice he had opened a “hotline ” for the people’s correspondence. “Here,” as it has been summarized by Gerhard von Rad, “Jahweh was within reach of Israel’s gratitude, here Israel was granted fellowship with him in the sacred meal. Above all, here Israel could be reached by his will for forgiveness.”1 Indeed, their sacrifice was always more significant in terms of what it said about the God of Israel than it was for its testimony to Israel’s faith. The attitude of the worshiper, when all is said and done, was always the unknown quantity in the transaction. So perhaps it should not surprise that by the end of the Old Testament era, despite the multifarious forms and details of the Jewish ritual, most sacrifice focused in one way or another upon atonement. The evil that we do, it was said, is never short-lived or self-destructive. On the contrary, the evil in an act spreads until it implicates not only the doer, but the whole community of which he or she is a part. Whereupon sacrifice becomes the means through which God acts to intervene in the inevitable chain of sin and calamity which proceeds from our willful imperfection. Thus God uses the act as a means through which he can bring redemption to his faithful people.2 But the New Testament casts the whole practice in an entirely different light. Indeed, there are aspects of the New Testament’s use of sacrificial theology which surely confound the sanctity of the Old Testament system, and thrust the whole idea into the depths of mystery. For the New Testament speaks clearly about the offering of a person for the sins of God’s people. And it does not take much familiarity with the people of Israel to recollect the horror with which they viewed the act of human sacrifice. Life in the bloodthirsty neighborhood of Canaan made such behavior a scandal and an abomination. Then the New Testament word: “When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come . . . he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:11). Once for all, it says. “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22). The perfect sacrifice of the perfect offering by the perfect priest will suffice once for all. That is the New Testament vantage on the ancient mystery. The horror of horrors is transformed into the Holy of Holies. Then add one more footnote: the sacrifice of Jesus, according to the New Testament, is example as well as atonement for the believer. “For this you have been called,” says the writer of 1 Peter, “because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21). Thus, potentially at least, the scandal of human sacrifice goes on within the community of the faithful. The imitatio Christi is a model for the Chris-

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    tian life which has attracted—better say demanded—the attention of believers in every generation from then to now. It is a mode, as we shall presently see, which has had a powerful impact upon the life of faith in America, the Beautiful.

    IL It should be clear without lengthy comment that the interpretation of the Christian life in terms of the imitation of Christ is not an idea on which Americans can claim either a patent or a monopoly. The history of the church is punctuated by the lives of faithful men and women who looked upon self-sacrifice —even martyrdom—after the style of Jesus as one of the conditions of faithfulness. To be a Christian, over the long centuries, meant to be willing to suffer. And in the early days of the American nation, there were episodes which required the recollection of that heritage. It was assumed, for example, that those devoted men and women who, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, offered themselves for missionary service in the foreign field, were in fact offering up their lives to a martyr’s death; and in many instances, the assumption was entirely accurate. But even in the popular piety of the new nation, the presumption was abroad that Christian life—even for those in the rank-and-file who never ventured more than a dozen miles from home in an entire lifetime—was an enterprise which was premised upon sacrifice. The revivalist theology of the Second Great Awakening emphasized the idea that Christ’s death was a sacrificial act, providing the believer with the motivation and the power to make a similar sacrifice.

    This was the gospel of love; salvation was a gift from God; Christ was the Lamb of God, who sacrificed himself for rich and poor alike to bring them into harmony with God. Converts should sacrifice themselves to bring this message to others, whether as revivalists or by joining benevolent associations or by raising money for missions.3

    There was sacrificial work which could be done by all members of the body of Christ; this was the motive spirit of antebellum Christianity in America. It must be said, however, that the image of sacrifice as a distinctive aspect of American piety and self-understanding did not finally come into focus until our great experience of national tragedy, dated 1861-65, which broke the back of our historical continuity even as it almost broke the back of the nation. The Civil War, we all know almost instinctively, was the one event in American history which touched every person in this land with the sorts of extreme expectations —for partisanship, for courage, for suffering—which demanded some sort of profound explanation. How could one explain a conflict in which brother challenged brother, in which men killed and were killed with a personal intensity scarcely ever paralleled before or since? For many—for most—there could never be any explanation which could suffice. There were some, though, who felt that what sense or balance which could be found in the midst of that profound tragedy was dependent upon the

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    basic Christian image of sacrificial love. The most eloquent among those interpreters , perhaps, was Horace Bushneil whose response to the Civil War seems in some respects to have been a persistent preoccupation for most of the rest of his life. In a sermon which he preached at Yale during 1865, as that university paid homage to its alumni who had died in the war, Bushnell reminded his hearers of the dictum from Hebrews: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” In like manner, he proposed,

    “without shedding of blood, there is almost nothing great in the world, or to be expected for it. For the life is in the blood,—all life; and it is put flowing within, partly for the serving of a nobler use in flowing out on fit occasion, to quicken and consecrate whatever it touched.”4

    In this case, Bushnell continued, those who have given their blood have served to open a new chapter for America. By the sacrifice of blood, the unity of the nation which was begun, but not completed, in our revolution and our struggle to make ourselves a constitution, was finally solidified and sactified. We were become, at last, a nation; and the shedding of blood, as awful and awe-full as it had to be, was the necessary representation of the collective guilt of the American people, both North and South. Nothing less than such a monumental tragedy could have sufficed. Nothing less than such an interpretation could ever bring people of both sides back into union.

    “These United States,” Bushnell declared, “having dissolved the intractable matter of so many infallible theories and bones of contention in the dreadful menstrum of their blood, are to settle into a fixed unity, and finally into a nearly homogeneous life.”5

    Sacrifice—now set inevitably into the context of military strife—seemed for Bushnell the means of national grace. And, of course, his words were seen as no mere “glory-to-the-gory” because of the poignant picture of a fallen president who had, both in sentiment and experience, embodied such an image of sacrifice. All along the way, culminating in his Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln had given hints of the same notion of national sacrifice for the sake of judgment and redemption:

    Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, it God wills that it continue until all wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”6

    The Civil War thus became for many Americans, both North and South, the epitome of sacrifice, both personal and corporate; and even among the diehards —the vengeful in the North and the revengeful in the South—there was a sense of the mystery of the event, which could not be fathomed by mere recourse to politics or sociology. And it came to pass, further, that the figure of the fallen hero, from presi-

    li

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    dent to private, was invested thereby with a special sanctity. Beginning shortly after the end of the war in the North, then finally spreading southward to all but a handful of states, the American people have undertaken to venerate our soldier dead of that and other wars by the observance of Memorial Day. This day, as Lloyd Warner had described it

    is a cult of the dead which organizes and integrates the various faiths and national and class groups into a sacred unity . . . The principal themes are those of the sacrifice of the soldier dead for the living and the obligation of the living to sacrifice their individual purposes for the good of the group, so that they, too, can perform their spiritual obligation.7

    Though it represents a spirituality which has far more in common with the nation than it does with the church, Memorial Day has come to epitomize the meaning of sacrifice in American culture. Somehow, the later efforts by Americans to speak of sacrifice within the context of faith have paled to relative insignificance.

    III. One of the recurring themes, for example, in the Social Gospel was the imitatio Christi: the self-sacrificing love of Jesus and the collateral demands upon his followers for personal sacrifice. Such a spirit, in the realm of compassion and social justice in the latter 19th century world of “root hog or die” was proclaimed as the essence of Christianity. As Charles Sheldon portrayed it with graphic repetition in his devotional classic, In His Steps, the believer was to confront each of life’s situations by posing the question, “What would Jesus do?” Thus, it was supposed, the model of Christian sacrifice would become incarnate in the lives of all faithful followers of the Way. Sad to say, however, such a pacific appropriation of the image of sacrifice was never to achieve widespread appreciation. Cynics (and others who should have known better) have met Sheldon’s admittedly sentimental question “What would Jesus do?” with the retort, “I’m not Jesus;” thereby evading the claims of sacrificial discipleship upon their lives. In part, at least, this can be blamed upon the dominance that the more militant images of sacrifice and heroism have commanded in our national life. It may be the case that there is an all-too-intimate bond in our minds between the fortunes of our country and the need for personal sacrifice. It may be that we need to take care as we assess the priorities of our allegiances. Our national existence and prosperity is, in my judgment, a gift of God for which we must make fit offerings of praise and gratitude to his name. Our nationalism , on the contrary, is an affront to God, a sin, an idolatry for which we must seek his forgiveness, lest he break out in wrath upon us. Our offerings on the altar of nationalism are of the sort against which we have been warned by the prophets from Amos on: “For three transgressions of Washington, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment.” If we can have learned anything from our history, and the recent history of the world around us, it ought to be that nationalism is a subtle but deadly idolatry. And we ought to have learned that,

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    as Aldous Huxley wrote, “Every idol, however exalted, turns out, in the long run, to be a Moloch, hungry for human sacrifice.”8 The grim specter of that collective sacrifice called war, which lurks eternally in the shadows of our lives, materializes all too readily when the nation becomes a god. And it does not seem errant to remind ourselves that since Bushnell’s all-atoning conflict of a century ago, we have enhanced the efficiency of warfare to the extent that the sacrifice, whenever it comes nowadays, increasingly includes the bodies of those who have no conscious, willing commitment to the ceremony—bystanders, if you will, whose bodies are offered up, willy-nilly, by their fanatic peers. And nuclear sacrifice, if ever it comes to that again, could make all our prior conflicts seem a Sunday School cookout by comparison. And is it too much to say that our misapprehension of the meaning of sacrifice has served as prelude to our current misunderstanding of the word “hero”? Who are your heroes, anyway? It has been suggested that you can discover the nature of a community if you can identify its heroes. If that be true, God help us! Daniel Boorstin wrote a while ago that we have badly misled ourselves in our quest for heroism. We have exaggerated our estimate of how much greatness can be found in individual representatives of the human species, and we have exchanged the older forms of greatness, he says, for a new kind of eminence . Heroism, saintliness, martyrdom have been overshadowed in our consciousness by this new creature, to which Boorstin refers as “the celebrity.” “The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.,f9 “Two centureis ago when a great man appeared, people looked for God’s purpose in him; today we look for his press agent.”10 More than a trace of sarcasm there, but surely there is a measure of insight available as well:

    The household names, the famous men [and women] who populate our consciousness are with few exceptions not heroes at all, but an artificial new product—a product of the Graphic Revolution in response to our exaggerated expectations. The more readily we make them and the more numerous they become, the less are they worthy of our admiration.11

    Thus, it may come to pass that we are witnessing the disappearance of heroism like the fading grin of the Cheshire Cat; and that our natural inclination to seek among ourselves role models to be admired and emulated will be confounded by the deft sleight-of-hand we call advertising. We look in vain for someone worth imitating, and we look, also in vain, for something worth living for—much less dying for. Perhaps it is a fact of life that there are no more American heroes, whether or not they have been proved by “liberating strife.” We have just about given up, haven’t we, on the possibility that a person can make things different by the way she/he lives. Charles Reich asserted some years ago in his Greening of America that Bogart’s performance in Casablanca represented the last moment at which most people were able to believe that a man could actually change fate by taking action. And Tom wolfe, perhaps equally tongue-in-

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    cheek, suggested that Junior Johnson of the Wilkes County moonshine-running , stock-car racing Johnsons, was the last real American hero. Since then it has all been downhill. Consider the possibility that ours is a generation of Americans which must recover or discover the notion of sacrifice. Consider the possibility that, especially in these times, as Christians we are called to define the term “hero” as the woman or man who bears, who endures, who gives without counting the cost, who suffers, willingly, for the sake of other children of God. What if we could find, in this great nation, a group of folk who really did love “mercy more than life?” It has happened, occasionally, in other places: in the remoteness of Schweitzer’s Africa, in the teeming streets of Mother Teresa’s Calcutta or Dom Helder Camera’s Rio. And, make no mistake, it happens here, too: in the courage of a single-parent of six, who fights the odds for food and clothing, schooling , and opportunity for a brood that has no place to go but up; in the determination of a schoolteacher in a ghetto, facing the physical fear of the classroom day after terrifying day; in the tirelessness of an advocate of justice who goes and goes and goes again into our jails to do the little things that bespeak compassion and hope. I believe that the times are right for those sorts of heroes: those willing to sacrifice themselves in the name of Christ. “Through the whole course of history,” wrote Reinhold Niebuhr,

    mankind has, by a true spiritual instinct, reserved its highest admiration for those heroes who resisted evil at the risk or price of fortune and life without too much hope of success. Sometimes their very indifference to the issue of success or failure provided the stamina which made success possible. Sometimes the heroes of faith perished outside the promised land. This paradoxical relation between the possible and the impossible in history proves that the frame of history is wider than the nature-time in which it is grounded. The injunction of Christ: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28) neatly indicates the dimension of human existence which transcends the basis which human life and history have in nature . . . It has been understood that a too desperate desire to preserve life or to gain obvious success must rob life of its meaning. If this be so, there cannot be a simple correlation between virtue and happiness, or between immediate and ultimate success.12

    We are not called to succeed, but to sacrifice. We are not called to win, but to be faithful.

    NOTES

    1. Gerhard von Rad, Old Testament Theology, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962), 1: 260. 2. Ibid., 266-71. 3. William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 119-20. 4. In Conrad Cherry, God’s New Israel (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971), 199.

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    5. Quoted in William A. Clebsch, “Christian Interpretations of the Civil War,” Church History 30 (1961): 217. 6. Quoted in Robert Bellah’s famous essay “Civil Religion in America,” reprinted in Russell E. Richey and Donald G. Jones, eds., American Civil Religion (New York: Harper Forum Books, 1974), 31. 7. Lloyd Warner, The Family of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 217. 8. Quoted in katallegete, Fall 1980, 42. 9. Daniel J. Boostin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Atheneum , 1975), 57. 10. Ibid., 45. 11. Ibid., 48. 12. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1952), 144.