Just another WordPress site

Author: Sara Palmer

  • The Work of the Spirit in a Technological Society

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 71

    The Work of the Spirit in a Technological

    Society

    Gibson Stroupe

    St Calumba Ρ*^η.ι^

    τιαη

    Church, Norfolk, Virginia

    A report released late in 1977 offered revelation about life in out technologi­ cal society. The repon indicated that in 1973 the CIA had made a study of psychics and me held of parapsychology. The purpose of the study was not to discover more about this mystery but to ascertain whether people with psychic powers could use those powers to gather intelligence data. Such a study revealed an essential element of a technological society: an emphasis upon means. As the Greek root«- of the word imply, “technology” is a systematic treatment of every­ thing in the world baveri on the belief that every phenomenon can be analyzed, broken down inte parts, and transformed to be used effeciently. Technology is more than a sum of various techniques. It is a fundamental approach to the world itself, a view of reality which has come to dominate the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us. Our society is shaped around this under­ standing of the world. The brevity of this article prevents adequate exploration of the sources of our technological culture. Those interested will find a full treatment in Jacques Eliul’s The Technological Society. Life in a technological society presents many faces. The most pleasant face is the tremendous improvement in the quality of our lives compared to the lives of our ancestors. No one can dispute the good which technology has brought to the world. In America i: has made life easier, providing a level of affluence and comfort unmatched in human history. In areas such as medicine and agricul­ ture, it has meant life rather death, food rather than starvation. This face of technology is testimony to God’s grace in relieving human suffering and in bringing a sense of security in human life. There are also less pleasant faces that characterize life in a technological society. One face mirrors the arrogance that permeates our lives as a result of technological power. Although the 1970’s have delivered some stunning blows to our confidence—blows such as the loss in Vietnam, the recalcitrance of poverty, the energy shortage, our erratic economy, Watergate—we still retain a large measure of faith in our own powers. George Will captured this faith suc­ cinctly when he mocked the reaction to the power blackout in New York City in 1977: “Why was mere nature allowed to disrupt technology?” (Newsweek, July 25, 1977). There are several sources of our arrogance, but none is more fundamental than the fact that we see life only as a problem to be solved. Whether the problem is in medicine, education, economics, psychology, or even religion, we feel that the answer is available and is only just around the corner. On an individual level, the glut of “how to” books bears witness to our supposition that we can accomplish anything we desire. The title of this article reflects the same confidence in our capabilities. I readily agreed to the title, and it was only as I

    Page 72

    began to wrestle with the article itself that I realized a potential attitude which might be associated with the title. We are so powerful in our technological society that we may even imagine we can know and predict the work of the Holy Spirit! There is another face of life in a technological society, the face which mirrors a superficial approach to ourselves and the world around us. One only need observe any segment of our lives to verify the power of superficiality in our culture. Speed is essential, whether we are hurtling through the air in an airplane , stuck in a traffic jam on the expressway, or standing in line at a fastfood franchise. Our central source of entertainment, television, encourages us to neglect encounters with the humans near us in deference to those seen on the screen. It has become safer and more preferable to talk with our favorite TV character than with our spouse or children. Theodore Roszak exposes our approach in his description of flying in an airplane in his book Where The Wasteland Ends. Humanity has dreamed of flying for thousands of years, and in the last fifty years it has become a reality. Yet, unless you are a child or a novice, flying is greeted not with wonder but with boredom. During a flight, we must occupy our time with eating, sleeping, or watching a movie. It is not an experience rooted in wonder but rather an experience to be endured. We live in an age that focuses its energy upon that which can be analyzed, described, and used efficiently. Life is seen not as a gift but as a process whose only purpose is conquest and transformation. We seek to avoid that which seems to defy order and structure. In a society committed to a mechanistic view of reality, the mysterious is anathema, the personal is intolerable. Churches have not been immune to this development. In the 1970’s the interest of churches in the nasty, imprecise questions raised by the social movements of the 1960’s has dwindled. Instead we have focused our attention on areas more capable of being ordered and structured: organizational development and management technique . All of us applaud the improvements of life brought by technology, but few of us applaud the faces of arrogance and superficiality seen in our lives. Many of us will fervently hope and pray that the unpleasant faces of technological life are not connected to the pleasant faces of that life. We will pray that we be allowed to retain our comfort while we seek to correct the ills of our technological society. The unpleasant faces of arrogance and superficiality, however, reveal that life in a technological society is human-centered, not God-centered. Life in a technological society centers around faith in ourselves and in our techniques —the enormous power generated by our techniques lures us into the idolatry of self-worship. For all the good that technology brings, it corrupts us spiritually , leaving us unwilling to trust in God. We prefer to trust in ourselves and our powers. This is a hard issue and brings us into the harsh area where there are rarely ever clear and easy choices. Proponents of technology will rightly respond here that for many in our world, the questions of the corruption of the spirit are questions of luxury. For those millions in the world who face starvation daily, food is life, and life is food. The questions of spirit are secondary to the questions of survival. Technology, not spiritual purity, holds the key to the survival of these millions of people—technology with its emphasis upon better types of grains, better methods of production, better methods of distribution. Defenders

    Page 73

    of technology will respond that it is the only hope for feeding the hungry. To undermine the sovereignty of technology is to condemn millions to starvation and death so that we may enjoy spiritual health and an abundant supply of food. Technology does provide food for survival for millions, and no one would deny its power for good in this instance. In a real sense, however, our dependence upon technology enables us to avoid the fundamental issues underlying hunger in the world. We have not even eradicated hunger in America, the most advanced technological nation in the world. The problem is that dependence upon technology as the solution to the hunger crisis enables us to avoid the root of the crisis: our unwillingness to share the wealth. The root of the crisis of hunger is not technical but spiritual, a crisis of will rather than of knowledge. Placing our hope in technology will help in the short tjun in numbers of people fed, but it will also doom future generations to the same fate because of our refusal to go to the root of the crisis. Is technology the culprit in our society or are the abuses associated with technology only manifestations of human sinfulness? There is no satisfactory answer to this question, but it is clear that we are willing to be corrupted, whether the source is technology’s great power, or whether the source is our great weakness. The problem remains that our technological powers lull us into thinking that we can solve our crises without ever confronting the spiritual corruption that lies at the heart of our technological society. I suspect that the prayers for preservation of our comfort will not be answered . Rather than praying that we be granted our comfort while we find solutions, we should be praying that the Holy Spirit give us hearts which are not thoroughly polluted with worship of our technological powers. God may burst our comfortable scene with a smashing judgment—let us pray that the Holy Spirit can cleanse our hearts before that time. The work of the Holy Spirit in our age is not confined to cleansing and judgment, for a strange malady plagues us in our technological society. Despite all our power, despite all of the knowledge that we have about the world around us, we feel alienated and separated from our surroundings, perhaps more than ever before in human history. We do not trust the present, and we especially distrust the future. Rather than feeling liberated by our technological powers —as the drum-beaters fifteen years ago told us that we would—we feel lost and powerless, unable to change our fate as individuals and as communities. Rather than feeling as if we have life under control, as our arrogance and superficiality would suggest, we feel dissatisfied and frustrated that life is so complex and overwhelming. While there is irony in this situation, it is not as surprising as it might seem. We have given technology control of our spirits, and we are convinced that it is king and savior and we the lowly peasants. The Holy Spirit reminds us that even in a technological society, human life has not been left to its own destructive devices. The Holy Spirit speaks to us as individuals and as communities. As individuals, the Holy Spirit reminds us that no matter how small and insignificant each of us might seem in a world of complexity, each one of us is still God’s creature, offered grace and caring through God’s love. The gift of the Holy Spirit in our time is the discovery that a person cannot finally be analyzed and ordered, for each of us in a mysterious synthesis of flesh and spirit, created in God’s image. This is a gift of sustenance

    Page 74

    which seeks to repair the brokenness of life that dominates our technological

    The Holy Spirit also brings us the gift of renewal, chiding us for taking ourselves and others for granted, for becoming oblivious to the mysteries of God’s creation, for being unwilling to confront the spiritual crises of our time. As individuals, the Holy Spirit reminds us that we are not powerless, that we are not hopelessly lost in a maze of affluence and comfort. The Holy Spirit reminds us that we are not slaves to the arrogance and superficiality of technological life. The Holy Spirit can empower us to confront our sinfulness, to begin to seek ways of change, to open ourselves to others who are on the same journey. We are reminded of our need to be in community with others, finding that we are not alone, that our efforts are not useless. The Holy Spirit is speaking now in the life of communities. It is no coincidence that the charismatic movement has gathered force as many of the churches have turned to technology for solutions in organizational problems. While the charismatic movement obviously has excesses and needs to be more aware of its limitations, it is testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit to bring renewal and to speak in ways that are surprising. On the communal level, an increasing number of people are being moved to join together in various types of groups and communities, discovering that they are in spiritual crisis, discovering that answers are found not in better methods of self-examination but in following the lead of the Holy Spirit in seeking to make God the center of their lives. These people are being led to worship God rather than their own powers, to share resources and talents rather than clinging to them in fear, and to hope for renewal and change in a world crouched in death and sterility. The Holy Spirit is at work in our technological society. As usual, that work is often surprising and disturbing. The Holy Spirit confronts us with our idolatry , our self-worship, our willingness to succumb to the death of our spirits which technology seeks. The Holy Spirit reminds us that God is ruler of the world, not the technological society in which we live. Even the massive conglomerates, the multinational corporations which seem to have so much power, even they are subject to God’s grace and judgment! The Holy Spirit reminds us that we are not doomed to slavery, that the determinism of technological life does not have complete control of our hearts. The Holy Spirit reminds us that there are alternatives to life as we now live it, alternatives which can bring life rather than death, alternatives that offer discoveries of joy and renewal in our time of despair and apathy. We can respond in different ways to the calling of the Holy Spirit. Some of us will harden our hearts and reject the working of the Holy Spirit. We will continue to walk in the way of the wicked, worshipping our power and continuing to crush other people and the earth in our drive for comfort. Yet, some of us will be led to join with others to share our talents, burdens, and resources. Some of us will begin to slow down and to see that there is, indeed, a world of mystery around us, a world filled with problems, but a world that is God’s and not ours. Some of us will begin to discover different values concerning our affluence, concerning our sisters and brothers who are hungry, whose lives are being destroyed so that we might be comfortable. Some of us, perhaps all of us in America, will suffer the judgment of having placed too much faith in our technological powers.

    Page 75

    For all of our power, for all of our faith in ourselves, the final answers to the problems of life in a technological society are not ours. We can do much in our world to relieve suffering and to bring joy, but the roots of such actions lie not in the realm of technology, but in the realm of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is working in our time to cleanse our hearts, to call us out to join with one another in sharing and caring, to center our hearts on God rather than on ourselves, and to give life to our spirits which seem so near death. Such gifts of renewal will not preclude judgment in our time. Bufin the upheavals surely to come in this generation or the next, let us pray that the Holy Spirit will bind up our wounds and bring us courage and joy, that like Isaiah, we shall run and not be weary, we shall walk and not faint.

    c;. .

  • Food and Thanksgiving

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 8

    Food And Thanksgiving

    James A. Cogswell

    General Assembly Mission Board, Atlanta, Georgia

    When the community of faith gathers to join hearts and voices in thanksgiving to Almighty God for all His benefits toward us, each of us comes with our own particular wellspring of thanksgiving. When we prepare to preach thanksgivings sermons, we instinctively reflect upon what the Lord had done for us and the members of our congregations during the course of the past year—the gifts of life, health of loved ones, of more than adequate provision for our daily needs, or possibly the gift of His sustaining grace and strength in the midst of difficulties , adversities, illness, hard times. Whatever the particular situation, thanksgiving is a time for us to take very literally the exhortation of the old hymn: “Count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.” But the day of Thanksgiving is meant to be more than this. When we gather with our congregations, we are but a microcosm of the whole nation. We join with God’s people in cities and towns, in large churches and small, in all manner of circumstances, to raise our united voice in thanksgiving to God as a nation. For surely we would be an ungrateful people if we did not give God thanks for his mercies to our nation. What a sense of awe should be ours as we contemplate God’s providence that has put us where we are. We are heirs of the best that God has given to any people who have ever lived on the face of the earth. We are in a country that spans a continent, secure between two broad oceans, a country with the cream of the agricultural land in the world, the richest of nations in our natural resources, with wide open spaces yet to develop and enjoy, six per cent of the world’s people enjoying over forty percent of the world’s wealth. What have we done to deserve this? But how can we sincerely offer thanks to God as a nation when we look beyond our own situation and see a world in such great need? With one-third of the world’s people living at or below starvation level; with hunger stalking the continents of Asia, Africa, and Latin America; with half the human race living on less than two hundred dollars per person per year; with malnutrition sapping their energy, stunting their bodies, shortening their lives; with simple, preventable diseases maiming and killing their children; with squalor and ugliness polluting and poisoning their surroundings—how do we keep our words of thanksgiving from sticking in our throats? It is a question that calls us to look deeply into the sources of our faith for an answer. Our reflections here will be based on Psalm 103 and Luke 18:9-14; 19:1-10. There are three types of thanksgiving expressed that are the options before us as citizens of this nation today. Let us call the first “lifeboat” thanksgiving, expressed in the prayer of the Pharisee: “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men.” This is thanksgiving that cuts us off from the rest of the world and

    Page 9

    celebrates the fact that we are safe and secure in our lifeboat while the rest of the world drowns in an ocean of need. The second let us call “guilty conscience” thanksgiving, expressed in the sharply contrasting prayer of the tax-collector: “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” It is thanksgiving that begins to see the connections between our affluence and the world’s want, and recognizes the need for God’s saving forgiveness. The third might be called “responsive” thanksgiving, expressed in the response of Zacchaeus to his encounter with Jesus. It is thanksgiving that responds to the totally unmerited grace of God by becoming the channel of His mercy and justice in the world.

    I. Two men entered the temple to pray, said Jesus. They came into the same church, stood before the same God, had the same religious tradition, were bound together in the same body of believers. But there the similarity ends. For as Jesus wiretaps the prayer that is offered in the heart of each man, we realize the sharp difference between them. The prayer that is heard in the heart of the Pharisee is this: “Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men. I look around me and find so many that are not what they are supposed to be, so many who disobey your law, so many unworthy of your goodness. While I, I am an upright man. You have been very good to me, but I deserve it. For I have fulfilled all the requirements for your blessing. I can catalog before you my merits. I am among the select group on the face of the earth that can stand before you unashamed, worthy to receive all that you have to give.” Within that prayer is wrapped all the self-righteousness, all the prejudice of race and nation, all the indifference to widespread wretchedness that has characterized coldly comfortable people through the ages. To those who enter into a rich heritage, the greatest danger is that last citadel of sin—pride. People richly blessed are easily tempted to think that they deserve what they have received. But the end result, according to Jesus, is that people with such an attitude cannot stand justified before God. And God’s kindness may well turn to severity in order that such pride may be humbled before Him. A lively debate is underway among thinkers and policymakers in our nation over the concept of “lifeboat ethics.”1 It reflects an attitude which is seeping into the thinking of an increasing number of people, whether they realize it or not, toward the world’s most desperately poor and hungry. It presumes that we in the rich nations of the world are in a lifeboat, surrounded by a vast sea of people who are in need. If we let any of them into our lifeboat, it will capsize. Much better that we not try to help them and let them drown, rather than that all of us should perish. There are numerous things that are wrong with that reasoning but let me mention only three. First, the best analogy for our world is not a lifeboat but a spaceship. We cannot isolate ourselves from whole nations and peoples, for we are bound together with them in an increasingly interrelated planet. In fact, we in the “have” nations are becoming increasingly dependent on what the “have not” nations have in raw materials and natural resources for our own survival. Therefore we sink or swim together. Second, hungry and starving nations don’t

    Page 10

    just “fade away.” They become political powderkegs. To think of cutting off assistance from whole peoples in desperate need is to ask for a world of revolt, revolution, chaos, anarchy, that may spell destruction for us all. Third, what will it do to the soul of a nation that deliberately wills the death and starvation of millions of fellow human beings? By what kind of teaching shall we be able to convince our children that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are life . . .”? Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum was speaking to a gathering of religious leaders from across the nation called together to find ways to alert the American public to the ominous dimensions of the world food crisis. Someone had expressed the cynical view that the American people, living in comfort and plenty, simply could not be aroused to this concern. To this Rabbi Tannenbaum responded: “In Nazi Germany, my people came through a holocaust in which a whole nation became so morally brutalized that they were willfully ignorant of the death of millions of fellow human beings whom they could have done much to save. Do we presume that the American people are so morally brutalized that they will remain willfully ignorant of a holocaust which will claim not millions but hundreds of millions of lives, which we of all the people on the earth can do most to prevent or to alleviate?” If indeed our thanksgiving is tinged with the pride of the Pharisee, if we look in disdain at a world that is struggling for survival and close our hearts to any response to them, if we decide that the world we want to pass along to our children is a world in which we deliberately will by our neglect the death of millions of people—then may God have mercy on our souls.

    II.

    Standing over against the attitude of the Pharisee is the attitude of the taxcollector in Jesus’ parable. His is a very different prayer. When he came into the presence of Almighty God, he could not so much as lift up his eyes. For he knew that his own life wreaked with disobedience to God and abuse of his neighbor, and he rightly deserved God’s judgment. The prayer that welled up in his heart was a desperate cry: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” “The central dynamic of human life,” says Bruce Larson, “is what to do with guilt.” Guilt in and by itself can be terribly destructive. It can plunge a person into the depths of depression and despair. It can paralyze and immobilize us. But then again, a sense of guilt when accompanied by the acceptance of forgiveness can bring cleansing and renewal. It can be the springboard for starting all over again with a new sense of purpose. The distinctive task of the church is to take guilt, both personal and corporate, and respond to it with the proclamation of the forgiving and renewing power of the love of God in Christ, in order that we might start over again. When we are really honest, we cannot help but have some sense of guilt for the part which we as individuals and as a nation have played in bringing about a world in which so many of God’s children live so perilously close to starvation. “Hunger,” someone has said, “is what happens when people stop caring for one

    Page 11

    another.” We are ashamed when we realize that the degree of our own affluence and wastefulness is one of the major reasons why there is not enough bread to spare for the poor of the world. “What most impressed you about America?” an international student was asked at the end of his stay in the United States. His immediate reply, “The size of your garbage cans.” We rightfully have a sense of guilt when we realize that we are heirs of a civilization built upon a colonial era of four centuries which systematically exploited the nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, as well as minorities in our own midst. We should feel guilty when we realize that we benefit from an international trade system by which we in the rich nations buy low and sell high, while those in the poor nations must buy high and sell low, so that we continually get richer while they inevitably get poorer. Certainly a sense of guilt about our part in creating and perpetuating this kind of world should get into our bones and spur us to genuine, thoroughgoing repentance.2 But “guilty conscience” thanksgiving is not enough. For unless it is acted upon it can turn into the acid of cynicism that is thrown upon all efforts to make the best of bad situations. It can lead to the attitude of the armchair prophet of doom, who excuses himself from any involvement in making things right and meeting human need now. We must go beyond “guilty conscience” thanksgiving if we are looking for thanksgiving at its best.

    III.

    What better model can there be than the “responsive” thanksgiving of the tax-collector Zacchaeus. His dramatic story is well known to us all. Straight across his life one day a line was drawn. Face to face he met Jesus of Nazareth. The whole impact of the Gospel was in that meeting. It redeemed the past, transformed the present, redirected the future. Fellowship with Jesus broke the hold riches had on him. His spontaneous gratitude was reflected in a whole new sense of values. By God’s grace, he became a new man even in the midst of his old circumstances. His wealth became a channel of blessing to others. Recognizing that he himself had been part of the problem, he determined from that moment to become part of the answer. In Zacchaeus, I believe we find thanksgiving at its best. It is thanksgiving that springs not so much from what God has done for us as from what He has done in us. As we count our blessings, we do more than measure whether this year’s harvest is better than last, or list homes, cars, boats, TV sets. No, with the Psalmist we name what God has done in us—He “who forgives all our iniquity, heals all our diseases, redeems our life from destruction, crowns our lives with steadfast love and mercy, and satisfies us with good as long as we live.” Among all our blessings, the greatest is that God gets at our sinful nature and our rebellious hearts, at all that is ugly and unholy in us, and removes it as far as the east is from the west. Thanksgiving at its best takes me, like Zacchaeus, where I am, helps me to see my personal blessings in the light of God’s larger purposes, and opens me that I may be a channel through which God’s mercy and justice may flow into the world. This indeed is the sign of salvation—that I become the means whereby God can do what he wants to do in the world.

    Page 12

    How do we pray a prayer of “responsive” thanksgiving in the world today? What, in very practical terms, are the works of mercy and justice by which we show our thanksgiving to God for His unmerited gace toward us? There is so much that could be said. Let me speak of only four things. (1) We shall take very seriously the reality of hunger and poverty right where we are. Sometimes it is easy to dramatize hunger far away and to overlook the fact that genuine hunger and need is very close to our own doorsteps. We shall not understand the depth nor the dynamic of hunger abroad until we deal realistically with hunger near at hand. Through our struggle with the reality of hunger where we are, we begin to learn those lessons which will enable us to know how to respond to hunger around the world. And among those lessons, I believe the most precious may be that we in the church must get out of the paternalistic habit of doing things for people, and get into the habit of doing things with people, working with them toward their empowerment that they may help themselves . (2) Responsive thanksgiving in our kind of world will lead us to take very seriously the stewardship of our citizenship, to press our nation toward fulfilling the role it should play in responding to world hunger and meeting the desperate need of poor nations for assistance in development. At the World Food Conference in Rome in November 1974, American congressmen were often heard to say, “I agree with all the recommendations coming out of this conference. But I don’t have a constituency that backs me up. Whenever these issues arise in Congress, the only voices I hear are those of isolationism and self-interest.” Thank God, the religious community in our nation is awakening to the fact that we have no more serious stewardship than our citizenship. Movements such as IMPACT and BREAD FOR THE WORLD3 are providing the kind of guidance by which individual Christians can know what are the crucial issues which are being decided by our leadership in government that will affect the survival of millions around the world. For example, at this Thanksgiving Season, Bread for the World is leading a nationwide offering of letters to our Senators and Representatives in Congress, urging that our nation reform its whole program of development assistance to poor nations so that we can better respond to the objectives set by the United Nations World Food Conference. This is a specific thing which we all can do to be part of the answer. (3) “Responsive” thanksgiving in our kind of world means that we shall marshal the resources of the church itself to make the war on hunger a major part of our total Christian mission. The church has a task to do that no governments and international agencies can do—to show that people are precious, not just for political or economic benefits to ourselves, but because they have been created in the image of God with the potential of glorifying Him. The church in its world-wide mission can reach to the grassroots of virtually every developing nation in the world as governments cannot do, can work to develop those programs in agricultural development, nutrition education, public health and family planning, which in time can become the models which governments can follow. But—all this can happen only if the membership of the church is committed to consistent stewardship for that kind of mission. One presbytery of our denomination began a “two cents per person per meal” campaign to support our world hunger program. They figured, to their amazement, that if the 30,000

    Page 13

    families of that presbytery did this consistently, in one year they would raise almost a million dollars! More than any other agency in our society, the church can make a dramatic difference in the war on hunger, and in the process give an immeasurably powerful witness to Christ. (4) But the most practical thing is probably at the same time the most difficult and most important thing. Responsive thanksgiving will lead us to reexamine our whole style of life, individually and corporately. The “consumption explosion” in the United States and other affluent nations over the past generation is undoubtedly one of the factors that has brought us to a world food crisis. If one out of five people in the world used resources at our rate, the other four would have nothing. As American Christians take seriously the call of our Lord to a lifestyle which reflects our discipleship to Him, we shall reduce our wastefulness, make more efficient use of food, energy and our other resources, and become less a part of the problem and more a part of the answer. At the close of the great Psalm of Thanksgiving, Psalm 103, as the Psalmist thinks upon the wondrous expanse of God’s goodness, he pulls out all the stops and rolls along his music in a great crescendo, calling upon the whole creation to bless the Lord, since all are blessed by Him. Then at last the Psalm circles around to its beginning, and the singer calls on his own soul to add his little human praise to the thunderous chorus of the whole creation: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.” I am reminded of the story of Amy Carmichael, a missionary who gave her life with radiant joy to ministering among the untouchables in India. In later life she revealed that her decision to venture upon what seemed an impossible mission came from hearing a layman pray the simple prayer, “We thank Thee, Lord, that Thou art able.” This is thanksgiving at its best—thanksgiving to God that He is able to take our feeble effort to express His mercy and His justice and to blend it into the mighty music of His work for the salvation of the world. Let this be the spirit of our thanksgiving: “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”

    1 For a summary of the “lifeboat ethic” debate, see Dieter T. Hessel, ed., Beyond Survival:

    Bread and Justice in Christian Perspective (New York: Friendship Press, 1977), chapter 2. The book is a symposium of studies done in various cities across the United States, covening theologians, educators, pastors, and bureaucrats with food producers, consumers, and leaders of action groups, to explore in depth some dimension of the hunger issue. Also for a closer look at the debate, see George R. Lucas, Jr., and Thomas W. Ogletree, ed, Lifeboat Ethics: The Moral Dilemmas of World Hunger (New York: Harper & Row, 1976). 2 A formative book on the hunger issue is Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins, Food First:

    Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977). Tracing the present world food crisis to its roots in the “colonial inheritance,” it contends that the crisis consists in the increasing monopolization of the world’s arable land and its produce by the wealthy elite of the Third World and the expanding multinational economic powers of the West. 3 Further information can be secured by writing the Task Force on World Hunger, 341 Ponce

    de Leon Ave., N.E., Atlanta, Ga. 30308.

  • Good News to the Poor

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 29

    Good News to the Poor

    Joseph S. Harvard, III

    North Decatur Presbyterian Church, Decatur, Georgia

    Once a woman entered the office of a First Presbyterian Church. Everyone was frantically attempting to meet bulletin and newsletter deadlines, answer the phone, and generally attend to the business of the church. She looked out of place with her shabby clothing, unkempt hair, dirty complexion, and heavy lines on her face. She wanted to talk with the pastor. “Which one?” the secretary snapped back. It was obvious she was in the way. When she did not answer immediately, the secretary said she would try to find one. The woman sat quietly out of the way. In a few minutes a minister came who ushered her into his office and listened to her story. It was not very different from hundreds of others he had heard, and it reminded him of the sermon he was working on—his text was “Dives and Lazarus,” and his title, which he hoped to fit to the text, was “Love’s Inevitable Expression.” The sermon was full of good Barthian theology, but like the woman’s story, it had no originality. Her husband had left her with three small children, and she was working as a maid whenever a neighbor could keep the children. This month had been bad with two of the children sick and her welfare check was late. She was not a beggar. In fact her family had always been self-supporting, but now she needed help. The pastor explained that funds were limited and this had been a hard month for several people. But he could probably give her $15 to help out. Of course, he would have to run a check with EEA (Ecumenical Emergency Assistance ) to make sure she was not making the rounds. He did so quickly, anxious to get back to that sermon on love before his train of thought was completely broken. The thought process had been exhilarating before the interruption. This sermon would make abstract love concrete. As he was writing the check he looked at the poor woman. She was similing at him. “What’s on your mind?” he asked as he filled in the stub. “You really don’t have a choice about helping me, do you?” she asked. “I mean, seeing as how you are a preacher.” “What do you mean?” he replied. “You got no choice but to help me * cause Jesus has a special place in his heart for us poor folks,” she responded. “I guess you are right,” he replied as he left the desk to give her the check and usher her out of the office. The preacher got back to the sermon, but he could not concentrate. The words of that poor woman kept running through his mind: “You got no choice but to help me ’cause Jesus has a special place in his heart for us poor folks.” The Bible clearly did say Jesus was “despised and rejected.” He knew she was right as he returned to his sermon. He began to thumb through the concordance for help on the subject. These passages were listed:

    “The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.” Psalm 103:6

    Page 30

    “Blessed is the one who considers the poor!” Psalm 41:1 “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse . . . and the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him . . . with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.” Isaiah 11:1 “Blessed are the poor; for yours is the kingdom of God.”Luke 6:20

    But then a question entered his mind: who are the poor about whom Jesus was concerned? He found some helpful words from Günther Bornkamm: “The poor and they that mourn are those who have nothing to expect from the world, but who expect everything from God. They look towards God, and also cast themselves upon God; in their lives and in their attitudes they are beggars before God . . . the poor who do not fit into the structure of the world and therefore are rejected by the world.” (Jesus of Nazareth, p.76) The woman who came into his office definitely fit that category—and so did Jesus. The preacher thought how easy it was for him and his congregation to recognize how they all needed God’s help, how they were obliged to “expect everything from God” because they were unable to sustain their lives. Galloping inflation was about to destroy their budgets; the competition was fierce; and the changing roles, particularly among women, were threatening. They all knew their lives were dependent on God. But when the list was extended to include welfare mothers, young blacks, and others who were standing in need—then they could not identify so easily with Jesus’ words. The record, however, was convincing and the poor woman was right—the God of the Bible has a bias toward the poor. The preacher went back to check the authorities. Karl Barth had said: “God always takes his stand unconditionally and passionately on this side and this side alone: against the lofty and on behalf of the lowly; against those who already enjoy right and privilege and on behalf of those who are denied it and deprived of it.” The preacher returned to his text and sought to focus more sharply on it. The familiar story had two main characters: Dives and Lazarus. Dives was a rich man, “clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day.” The minister wondered who were the contemporary rich folks and immediately envisioned a person successful in business, law, or medicine. It would probably be a Presbyterian making a large salary, living in a huge home, maintaining a summer place, driving a big car, enjoying gourmet food and fine restaurants, knowing the difference between Beeteaters’, Gordon’s or Gilby’s gin, and belonging to a private club or two. “Lord I thank you that I am not like one of them,” was the preacher’s silent prayer. But wasn’t that the image of success in his culture? He had himself worked for all those things secretly. The doctor had advised him to lose some weight; he needed a raise simply to keep up with the cost of living; and he had just bought a Botany 500 suit so he could look like a successful executive. He was in the 8% who used 40% of the world’s resources. He was not rich; he only wanted some security. The rich man in Luke’s parable was obviously generous. He would pull out his check book for a good charity in a minute, and he contributed heavily to the church budget. This much was obvious because the poor stood outside his gate desiring to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. The word had gotten around that Dives would drop a bill occasionally. But while Dives was fathomable , Lazarus was more difficult to bring into focus. The preacher had been to school with the Diveses of this world and eaten at their tables, but the Lazaruses

    Page 31

    were only statistics and invisible to his naked eye. They never came to the Presbyterian church. Many of them were young and black in the urban ghetto where no “successful” churches were found. The preacher had read an interesting statistic. In his state a welfare mother with three children was expected to live on $141 a month including food, shelter, clothing, utilities, medical expenses , and miscellaneous. It sounded a little low to him. Someone said it was the lowest in the nation. In fact it was less than his mortgage payment each month. Lazarus must be a marginal person, one of those folks you see standing idly on the street corner when you stop for a red light, or one of those in line at the grocery store with food stamps. He is an embarrassment to a culture that worships affluence. Only once had the preacher been poor—relatively speaking of course! It was during seminary, and then he and his wife were never hungry and had, in fact, been quiet happy with their simpler lifestyle. They were able to load all their possessions in a Volkswagen. On the last move it took a huge moving van. They had often commented that their possessions were awesome. At any rate, the preacher recognized that most of the time he was not aware Lazarus was there. But occasionally he heard of thefts or other acts that threatened the order of things. Then he thought of Lazarus who otherwise was invisible —except at Thanksgiving and Christmas when he became the object of seasonal charity. Of course the preacher knew there was a difference between welfare and charity. A recent survey which the preacher had clipped was headlined: “Poll Shows Public Favors Welfare: Hates Concept.” The survey found that the very word “welfare” seemed to raise a kind of red flag before the public. But once the word was set aside, Americans displayed a deep compassion for those who were destitute and helpless. The preacher had the feeling that if he could introduce Dives to Lazarus at a church supper, the beggar at the gate might become more real. How could he get people beyond this “hangup” with a concept so good news could be preached to the poor in Jesus’ name? When would it be realized that the personal concern must be translated into systematic change to remove Lazarus from the invisible status? Soon it might be too late. For of late Lazarus had not been willing to sit quietly at the gate. He had been raising his voice and becoming pushy to get a fair share of the pie. Even more disturbing, the Bible had been used as the basis of his protest, one made in the name of the Lord. The preacher went to the Bible dictionary. It said: “Lazarus means ‘God helps.’” So Lazarus would no longer wait in silence for the garbage from affluent tables. It dawned on the preacher that good news to the poor meant adjustment for the rich. The story went on to affirm that God was on the side of poor Lazarus. The preacher was uncomfortable because after both had died Dives had a funeral fitting his status and wealth, while Lazarus still had nothing. But Jesus’ tale described a dramatic shift thereafter: Lazarus was in heaven and Dives was in hell. And Dives’ insensitivity to Lazarus had been the criteria for judgment. Surely, thought the preacher, Lazarus deserved a break. But why was Dives’ judged so harshly by a loving and forgiving God? These questions bothered him because he was not sure where he fit, being neither rich nor poor. Maybe . . . he was one of the brothers and sisters to whom Lazarus wanted to speak about the way God looked at things. He pulled out a sermon by a favorite preacher, Edmund Steimle, who shed some light on the great reversal in the parable:

    Page 32

    What Jesus is doing, of course, in this trip to hell and back is not to lay down a theology of the after life or to discuss the question whether universal salvation is a possibility or not; that’s not his point. The point is to show us by these stark contrasts what’s really going on in life here. The great gulf fixed is one of our own digging here ano! now. And as we dig it and defend it and rationalize it and justify it—even from the Bible at times for is it not written that “the poor you have with you always”—we are in fact destroying one of the fundamental facts of creation. For from the very beginning we are created to become involved, to live in relationship to each other in a community of mutual concern—one human family. We are created to be dependent upon one another or, as Robert Frost says somewhere, “love and need are one.” Jesus apparently, thinks it necessary to take us to hell and back to see what a hell we can make of life here and now, a hell that is inexorable, “eternal” in the sense of being ultimate—so long as we deny our basic humanity by failing to identify with the brothers and sisters in need.

    He was reminded of some words by a Christian brother from Latin America who has pleaded the cause of the poor and poorless in his country. Don Helder Cámara had raised the right question:

    Have you noticed who bury their talents? Not just the person with only one, but people given five or ten, instead of reaping double, become comfortable, falsely cautious, falsely humble, and at harvest home return in empty handed barrenness. . . . Don’t call them yet to account. Wait a moment, Let me go out to my brothers and sisters, try to rouse them by my cry. . . . Maybe this was the point—to be awakened to the hell of human construction . Where were the concerns of the poor on his church’s agenda? It was the next question the preacher could not avoid. His church had just gone into a million dollar building program, already having spent several hundred thousand dollars for an organ. It would certainly enhance the aesthetics of their worship, but what about Lazarus at the door? He remembered a drawing by Robert Hodgell he had seen in another minister’s study depicting a preacher in his clerical garb carrying a replica of a huge church in his arms. Beside him a beggar was asking for some help. The anguished look on the pastor’s face reflected his inability to help because of his heavy load. He remembered the lines of a favorite hymn: “Rich in things and poor in soul. Grant us wisdom grant us courage for the living of these days.” He recalled a rich congregation in another city which had voted to defer a building of a million dollar sanctuary in favor of providing food for the hungry. It was a courageous act. That pastor had said the officers could not in good conscience vote to build when they knew two thirds of the human family goes to bed hungry every night. But surely giving away food could

    Page 33

    not be the answer. Then the pastor was reminded of another church which had given several hundred thousand dollars to a project in a poor country to develop better agricultural methods and to provide better health care. At last report the gift had been making a difference to those who received and to those who gave. Where could he begin with his congregation? Perhaps he could prompt them to listen to the cries of their brothers and sisters in need and provide a forum in which these voices might be heard. A fellow Presbyterian in the state legislature had drawn a blank when he was asked about the plight of the poor welfare mothers and children in their state! In a state where payments were the lowest in the nation, he had voted five times not to increase benefits. It was not a major concern of his constituents he said. Perhaps some education needed to go on about the plight of the poor so the church could speak to legislators on behalf of the poor. Lifestyle questions could be addressed. The preacher’s mind was full of ideas, and they were more deeply etched by a quote from a new book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger:

    Christians should be in the vanguard. The church of Jesus Christ is the most universal body in the world today. All we need to do is truly obey the One we rightly worship. But to obey will mean to follow. And he lives among the poor and oppressed, seeking justice for those in agony. If at this moment in history a few million Christians in affluent nations dare to join hands with the poor around the world, we will decisively influence the course of world history. Together we must strive to be a biblical people ready to follow wherever Scripture leads.

    Suddenly he reversed in his mind the familiar lines: “Poor in things and rich in soul.” Could it be that the hunger he and his congregation had felt for a closer relationship with God, a return to spirituality, was related to the needs of the poor? Prayer and Bible study were essential for his soul, but so was food for the hungry. Good news to the poor required food for body and soul. Listening to their brothers and sisters in need might remind his congregation of their deep needs which they could not meet alone no matter how wealthy they were. In the final analysis they all would appear before God with empty hands. Who of them could ever save their life? “The poor you will always have with you” might be a reminder of the status of each in the kingdom. They might be in touch with a mysticism far richer than they ever imagined: “I was hungry and you. . . . ” They might meet their Lord when they were in touch with the human needs of their brothers and sisters. The preacher suddenly realized that it was the Spirit who compelled the preaching of the good news to the poor. For a moment the preacher seemed to see it all fit together like a beautiful jigsaw puzzle—or had he blown a fuse? For heaven’s sake, it was 12:11 and he was late for Kiwanis at the Hilton. Then to the hospitals. . . . It was such a beautiful day. . . . Hopefully there would be time for golf with Jim, a new elder and executive vice president at First National; or at least time to jog a couple of miles before a quick shower and supper followed by a rush back to the church to meet with the building committee regarding the new sanctuary. And of course he had to remember that phrase from Frost, “love and need are one,” because it seemed to go with “Love’s Inevitable Expression.” As he reached to cut off the desk lamp his eyes caught the closing words:

    If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should raise from the dead.

  • Advent Expectations

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 4

    Advent

    Expectations

    Joyce Cummings Tucker

    John Knox Presbyterian Church, Mareitta, Georgia

    As American Christians move through Advent and approach Christmas they bring to the season many different expectations. Many of our hopes for Advent and Christmas have been nurtured through the years by our Christian faith. Certain passages of scripture, certain hymns, certain customs awaken deep within us the authentic hopes and dreams of Ancient Israel and of the Christian Church throughout its history. We 20th century Americans can experience some of the wonder and mystery of Advent. But to experience anew the deepest joys of expecting the coming of Christ, we need a clear understanding of the source of our expectations for the Advent and Christmas seasons. Preachers can help church members separate out in their thinking and living the true Advent expectations from those expectations we derive from our culture. For we approach the celebration of Christmas with many expectations which have little or nothing to do with the message and meaning of the coming of Christ. Preachers can raise the important questions in many ways: Do we approach Christmas with an attitude of expectancy? If so, are the hopes and longings, the fulfillment of which is heralded by the Advent season, merely an extension of the expectations of our American culture? Or is there a radical difference between that Christian hope which grows in intensity as Christmas draws nearer and the general aspirations of our day? Is there a relationship between one’s Advent expectations and one’s sense of self-worth? To those who do not approach Christmas from a stance of expectancy we might ask the following questions : Is your lack of hope caused by a profound disillusionment with American culture? Do you value yourself in terms of culture’s standards and therefore come up lacking? Have you heard the true message of Advent or has that message been blocked out by the trappings with which we surround the celebration of Christ’s coming? To begin to address these and related questions it is helpful to look first at some of the general expectations of our culture. What does our culture say gives value and meaning to life? Next we will look at those specific expectations which our culture associates with Christmas. Then we will consider the authentic expectations of the Christain faith as Christmas approaches.

    /. As we reflect upon our culture one hope is evidenced over and over again: the American expectation that our style of life will get * ‘bigger and better.” The voices crying for Americans to set voluntary limits upon our use of the world’s resources and to simplify our life styles seem indeed to be voices crying in the wilderness. We may realize that everyone cannot continue to have more and

    Page 5

    more but somehow we are exceptions. We may have become aware through continuous bouts with the frustrations of inflation that we dare not hope to make as rapid economic progress as many Americans once did. But we still expect to advance! Moreover, for a large percentage of us, our sense of self-worth is closely tied with economic progress. Very few are entirely free from feeling that our worth is somewhat determined by our ability to make progress toward economic success. We value ourselves by our ability to “get ahead” financially. And it is the “getting ahead” that matters! For the most part we have not been able to make adjustments in our expectations because we have started out far ahead of most of the world’s citizens—and perhaps far ahead of where our parents before us started. We have heard over and over again the stories which preceding generations tell about making economic progress over the course of a lifetime by hard work and careful planning. The process of increasing the financial resources of the individual or of the family was what gave persons a sense of value. People could feel a great deal of satisfaction in being able to say that they started out with little or nothing, scrimped and saved, worked hard, suffered through bad times, but managed to make tremendous strides. Families could point out that they moved into a nice house, educated their children, enjoyed vacations in their middle years, and had money left for retirement. They were even able to leave money to their children when they died. And just think—they started with nothing! In the last decade our experience has been different. We who perhaps started out at the bottom—but with many advantages—have discovered that hard work does’not get us much further ahead. We have discovered that we are merely treading water. Those who puchased homes a few years ago find that their plans to furnish the living room the following year didn’t materialize. Four or five years have gone by and the living room is still bare. What happened to progress? And for many people that American dream of home ownership may never become a reality. Prices of homes are rising at an alarming rate. Some families discover that even with two wage earners in the family, they still don’t experience much economic advancement. Prices climb faster than income; at least it seems that way. Inflation is an ugly word which affects us all—especially those living on a fixed income. The economic expectations of our culture for the last 30 or more years may have been unrealistic, even immoral. But Americans have clung to them and invested much of their feeling of self-worth in them. We have now reached a time of mounting frustration caused by these expectations. Thwarted expectations can lead to despair. The preacher can help first by identifying the expectations , then by addressing the frustration, and finally by helping persons to set new expectations. I have emphasized the economic expectations engendered by American culture. But we also have other culturally defined expectations. In addition to comfort we expect love. But what kind of love? Much of the love portrayed in advertising and through the media is of a very shallow kind. As Christians we may well question whether we can ever experience the fulfillment we dream of from such a shallow and passing kind of love. But what if we are denied even our culture’s type of love? Our culture says that sexual love is readily available. And most of the people we see enjoying sexual love also are physically beautiful.

    Page 6

    What does an expectation which links physical beauty and sexual fulfillment say to people who are not beautiful or handsome, no matter how hard they try to be, or who do not find a person with whom there is a mutual sexual attraction? The holding of these expectations can lead to despair and feelings of worthlessness, rather than to pleasure and feelings of joy. And what about the expectations which surround the celebration of Christmas itself? Practically every part of American culture becomes involved in some aspect of the celebration of Christmas. Gift items of every conceivable type bearing ever-increasing price tags not only appear in stores but also greet us in extra sections of newspapers, in magazines, and on television and radio. The power of advertising propels people into stores. Slogans of good cheer are everywhere . American business is moving towards the biggest buying season of the year. For those who have money, spirits rise—at least temporarily. But what happens to those who have little money for buying fine gifts and little hope of receiving any either? For many, spirits fall and depression sets in. The approaching Christmas season only intensifies the feelings of alienation and estrangement . Instead of the experience of peace there is inner turmoil—feelings of self-doubt. If one’s expectations for the approaching season are limited to those promoted by American culture, then there is potential for devastating disappointment.

    In contrast think of the authentic expectations of the Christmas faith. What happened to those expectations of God’s breaking into human history which kept hope alive among a defeated people? Where is the longing for the coming of the everlasting God, the source of all life, who has promised redemption, who gives value to each individual person, who will overturn all forces of injustice and who will judge and create anew? The true Advent hope does not look for fulfillment in any culture but looks toward the intervening of the God who gives value to all people and meaning to each life by taking on human form, entering into human affairs, experiencing human longings, human suffering—even death itself—and triumphs! Why do Christians look forward to Christmas? Why do we prepare for four weeks for the arrival of that special day? Because Christmas tells us that we are valued by God. Christmas gives us a new way of assessing our value, another standard of human worth, which is in stark contrast to the standards of culture. The birth of Christ shows God’s identification with the poor, the oppressed of this world. The long-expected Savior was born to parents of no economic means or social prominence. The child became a member of a nation ruled by foreigners. The birth took place in a stable, among the animals with no conveniences for the mother or child. First century Jews were looking for a mighty king to overthrow the Romans. They, like 20th century Americans, were looking for salvation at the heights of civil power and economic prestige. Instead they received a baby born to parents for whom there was no room in the inn of Bethlehem. God chose to enter the most humble of lives and thus to show the world that its expectations, its values were contrary to God’s. The Incarnation

    Page 7

    tells us that no one of us is even close to being worthless or useless. We have all been given a tremendous amount of value by the God who made us and loved us to the point of becoming one with us through the person Christ Jesus. How are we enabled to feel—to know on the feeling level—that we are of great worth to God? We need regular experiences of being valued in order to know with assurance that we are indeed of great value. The church could plan its Advent events in such a way as to assure that each person would have at least some experiences of fellowship, of being valued by others within the Christian community. We cannot communicate to persons that God values them if we do not show them that we value them. It is especially important for the church to communicate to its children that Christmas means that they are valued by God through the coming of Jesus Christ. We often leave out the children or make them participate in events designed with adults in mind. Our children, who get so caught up in the culture’s Christmas expectations, must not be denied some opportunity to experience God’s love through the family of God’s people during Advent and Christmas. According to Luke’s Gospel, the angel who appeared to Mary to announce that she would be the mother of the Messiah said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” When the angel appeared to the shepherds they received the same word: “Be not afraid.” To Christians of our day approaching Advent the word also comes: “Do not be afraid!” And we today very much need to hear that word! Do not be afraid to reject as invalid the expectations of our culture as to what gives life meaning and what gives people value. (Mary willingly broke with the cultural expectations of her day! Mary’s response to the angel: “Let it be to me according to your word.”) Do not be afraid to move into the future—even in this time of rapid change—for we know who we are. We are the people of God. One of the authentic expectations of Advent is to hear again that word, “Do not be afraid.” If one’s expectations are grounded in the culture, then there is reason to live in fear. But if one’s expectations are grounded in the Christian faith, then there is reason to live in hope. For our hope rests in the Christ whom we know will come, even as he has come before and is with us now. We can await that coming with great joy, for the one who comes is the one who leads us into newness of life, even beyond all our expectations.

  • Choosing and Using Hymns

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 83

    Choosing and Using Hymns

    Austin C. Lovelace,

    Wellshire Presbyterian Church, Denver, Colorado

    Presbyterian law concerning the rights of a pastor is very clear: “There are certain responsibilities which belong to the minister as pastor which are not subject to the authority of the session, but which must be exercised by him subject only to the constitutional authority of the presbytery, namely: the selection of the hymns or psalms to be sung at each service, the selection of a passage or passages of Scripture to be read at each service, the leading of the people in prayer, and the preparation and preaching of the sermon.” (The Book of Order, 1977-78, 38.04) It is fascinating that the choice of hymns is listed first and the preparation and delivery of the sermon last. Does this mean the church looks on hymns as of primary importance, or the opposite? In either case the responsibility for the choice is of more importance than most ministers are aware, and this responsibility should be shared with the musical leaders. Methodist circuit riders went on their rounds with a Bible and a hymnal in their saddle bags, for they recognized that the power of the sung gospel was equally as important to the propagation of the gospel as was the preaching of the Word.

    I In Hymns for Today and Tomorrow, Erik Routley indicates three tendencies in hymn singing which he declares to be deplorable but curable. “The choosing of hymns by habit instead of by the free and firm use of intelligence is one. The stupid and inattentive singing of hymns is another. The encouragement of congregations to believe in their right never to learn anything new is a third;’ (p.155) The primary responsibility in this matter lies in the hands of the minister, but there are several factors of which one should be aware. First, one must become familiar with every hymn in the hymnal (and from there should move on to explore other collections.) One should obtain a handbook for the hymnal, or read historical studies of hymns as background, and then set out on a systematic and careful study of every hymn in the book. If one does not read music, consultation with the organist or director about any tune which does not look familiar is in order. Ask whether the tune is singable and worth learning. Next, make a list of every hymn which has been sung (and how many times) during the past years. Note which have been over-used, and which have been neglected. Discover the areas of the hymnal which have been avoided, and ask why. Make a list of hymns which should be added to the repertoire, and another of those which should be gradually dropped because of inferiority, non-usefulness, or irrelevant or false message. One of the limitations which affects choices is between the familiar and the unfamiliar. It is not correct to say that only the familiar should be sung: neither

    Page 84

    is it correct to sing a steady diet of none but unfamiliar hymns week after week. Another consideration will be to discover what the congregation likes because it is easy, and what it dislikes because it is difficult. This again is not to say that one should avoid what is difficult, if learning the hymn is worth the effort. When pew-people say, “I know what I like,” what they mean is, “I like what I know/’ and it is human nature to avoid the difficult and the unfamiliar. “I don’t like it” is never a valid basis for argument or decision on any hymn. One does not get to the resurrection by-passing the cross, and any great hymn offers its reward only when the singer takes up the cross regularly, and eventually finds it a blessing. Congregations need to be reminded that every favorite hymn at one time was new, unknown, and possibly resisted. You can do a great deal to develop Christian growth by your choice of hymns which stretch the mind and spirit, and push the cozy singers out of the womb which too many gladly would also make their tomb. In choosing a hymn the primary image which a congregation gets depends on the first line, and this means that the opening phrase must be striking and attention getting. There are, of course, incidental images which may filter through, but a hymn must have a central thought which is captured in the opening line. The choice of hymns is often affected by the organization of the hymnal, and there are several different methods, none of which is ideal or perfect. In liturgical churches it is customary to arrange hymns according to the Church Year. The Hymnbook, published by five Presbyterian bodies in 1955, was organized along topical lines—a standard approach for most hymnals. The new Methodist Hymnal, 1964, returned to a format based on the movements of Christian experience, following a design used by John Wesley. And there is The Worshipbook (1970) which is arranged alphabetically. While it is easy to find a title if you know it, the book is useful only if the “Guide for the Use of Hymns” at page 660 is used effectively. The real question is still left unanswered, “On what basis shall hymns be chosen?” Let us look at several patterns in common use. First, choosing hymns according to the Church (or Christian) Year. If a lectionary is used and if the congregation is aware of the meaning and thrust of each season and if the minister preaches from this lectionary and the people come with an expectancy of hearing certain themes at certain times of the year, hymns which undergird this cyclical theme are helpful. A second pattern for choice is based on the liturgy itself. It is a strange anomaly that churches such as the Episcopal or Lutheran, where there is a highly ordered structure for worship, include few places for hymns per se; whereas the socalled non-liturgical churches who take pride in their charismatic, disorganized, and loosely structured orders of worship tend to include more hymns. The more the service is designed to be homey, friendly, and popular the greater the prominence given to hymns. In some churches, particularly Lutheran, hymns are seen primarily as illustrations of creedal positions and the scriptures. Here the hymns are chosen and placed to undergird statements of beliefs and to make commentary on the lections of the day. In some churches hymns are treated more as ceremony—for processionals and recessionals.

    Page 85

    In the Reformed tradition at its best, hymns are chosen to provide a congre­ gational response to what has been done and said in their name by the minister. In this case, well chosen hymns give the congregation a chance to respond to the movements of the liturgy. If the hymns are carelessly thrown in, the service becomes what Routley calls “a disorganized heap of pious actions, gone through in this order merely because the minister directs that this shall be done.” And this, he says, is a subtle form of sacerdotalism. Whether hymns are chosen for their response to the liturgy, or as creedal, or illustrative of Scripture or church teachings, the words ought to be studied carefully before they are chosen to make certain their imagery is not misleading and that their singing will make sense to a contemporary congregation. In addition to these patterns there are others which are completely indefen­ sible: (1) Singing hymns as time fillers. (2) Inviting the congregation to call out favorite numbers. (3) Choosing a hymn as a “seventh inning stretch with sound effects.” (4) Hymns as hypnotism—using hymns psychologically to soften up a crowd. (5) Hymns as escape from reality. (6) Hymns interspersed for fun singing. (7) Hymns as a come-on. Where hymns are chosen with care and attention to their message and placement in the service, they can become part of the preaching of the gospel. At their best they can envelop the worship with the church’s teaching, focusing pointed light at a theme which is being emphasized on that particular occasion. The hymnal then can become a precision tool in ministry and a means of grace to the congregation. In choosing hymns there is a necessity for care in balancing meters, subject, and textures. Just as a meal consisting of all roast beef or all jello is inadequate, so a service in which all hymns are in one meter (whether Common, Long, or long winded 10’s) will have a deading impact. If all of the hymns are of a light, ephemeral nature the service will lack substance; if all are heavy, didactic texts the congregation will suffer from indigestion. One should keep a balance of historical periods and avoid having all hymns in a single key. By all means avoid choosing hymns entirely based on the sermon theme—there are places for praise, confession, thankgiving, and commitment. Consider the entire congregation in your choices, remembering that older people may want to sing some hymns they know, and children should be permitted to sing some which they like and can understand. Just as a dietician plans a meal which appeals to all appetites but provides all of the necessary vitamins and minerals, so should the minister choose hymnic fare which is palatable to the singers and provides spiritual sustenance and food for growth. Dr. Kendrick Grobel in his fine translation of Clement of Alexandria’s hymn, “0 Guide to Every Child of Thine,” has this intriguing line: “Give milk or bread, or solid food As fits my understanding.” Include all three kinds of food in your selections, but don’t forget that there are some people who will ask to be breast fed forever if you will let them.

    Π

    Pastors not only have the responsibility for choosing hymns, they also seek to provide meaningful variety in their use. The following catalogue of possibili­ ties begins to unearth some of this rich variety.

    Page 86

    Hymns may be used as processionals, either for normal Sunday traveling music by the choir, or in an extended procession of congregation and/or choir. They may be accompanied by percussion instruments to keep a steady pace, and by solo instruments such as recorders, flutes, oboes, etc., to keep pitch. Handbells or Orff instruments can give a simple ostinato pattern to maintain pitch and rhythm. Hymns as Choral Introits. (“Come down, O Love divine”; ” 0 my soul, bless God the Father”; “Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates,” st.4; “Good Christian men, rejoice and sing,” st. 1, 2, or 5) Hymns as Calls to Prayer. A carefully chosen hymn sung by choir or congregation can focus the mind and spirit on the prayer which follows. (“Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire,” last stanza; “Spirit of God, descent upon my heart,” st. 1; “Dear Lord and Father of mankind,” st. 1, 4, or 5) Preparation for Scripture. Occasionally a hymn about the Word of God may focus attention to the reading of a lesson. (“Break Thou the bread of life”; “Blessed Jesus, at Thy Word”; “Holy Spirit, Truth Divine”; “How firm a foundation ,” st. 1; “Break forth, 0 living light of God,” st. 2 or 4.) Response to Scripture. If a hymn is sung after the Scripture lesson in the Reformed tradition, it should be a response to the passage just read. Gradual hymns. The word “gradual” comes from “gradus,” meaning step. It is customary in many traditions to have the minister or priest move from location to another so that the Old Testament lesson is read from one place and the New Testament from another. In such cases, a hymn which bridges two readings but also ties them together with its message can be very helpful in bringing unity to the service. Hymns as Prayers. Most hymns are prayers and there is no reason why hymns cannot be used as prayers alone, as part of a pastoral prayer, or as a unison prayer by the congregation. The words move by more rapidly than in singing, and the thought content is clearer when read. (“0 God of earth and altar.”) Offertory sentences or responses. (“All things are Thine”; “We giveThee but Thine own”; “What shall I render to my God”; “As men of old their first fruits brought,” st. 3.) Hymns as sermon outlines. Where a hymn is rooted strongly in the Scriptures , the various stanzas may suggest an outline for a sermon. Hymns as litanies. There are some hymns such as “Jesus, with Thy Church abide” which can either be read or sung as litanies. In another variation the minister may read the first three lines, and the congregation sing the litany refrain. (“Father eternal, Ruler of creation”; “When we are tempted to deny your Son.”) Responsive or antiphonal reading or singing. This is related to the idea of a litany, except that in some hymns the thoughts are so divided that one group can effectively read the first half, while the others read the second half. This can also be done effectively with soloist or choir singing the first half, and the congregation reponding with the second half. (“Our Father, which art in heaven”—West Indian folksong; “Praise the Lord, His glories show.”) Paraphrase following Scripture. Where an excellent paraphrase is available, it can effectively be sung immediately following the reading. For example, after reading John 1:1-13 sing “Father eternal, Ruler of creation,” st. 4.)

    Page 87

    Hymns and Interpretative Dance. Many hymns lend themselves to interpretation if the dancers are well trained and are sensitive to their responsibilities of interpretation through movement. (“In Christ there is no east nor west”; “I danced in the morning.”) Choric Reading. Through the use of solo and chorus voices at different pitch levels, hymns can be given fresh interpretations. Percussion can also be added. Hymns read and sung. In long hymns with many stanzas, perhaps the first and last can be sung and all of the middle stanzas read. Hymns as anthems. Anthems can be arranged directly from the hymnal for all kinds of choirs by using some imagination in the treatment. See Music and Worship in the Church, Lovelace and Rice, Abingdon Press, 1976, for a listing of twenty-two suggested ways to arrange a hymn as an anthem. Hymns for meditation. List several hymn numbers at the top of the bulletin to be read as preparation for worship along with the hymns which are to be sung. Or list hymns to be read during the Communion service. Hymns for home devotions. Suggest a hymn each week to be used at the breakfast table or at devotions. Or build a special Advent service for home use based on hymns. Dividing a hymn. On a long hymn, divide it into sections so that only a few stanzas are sung at a time. Choosing stanzas. It is not necessary to sing every stanza of every hymn. Sometimes a single stanza is appropriate, and sometimes you may decide to start with stanza two, or even a later one. In many hymns there are several different ideas, and there is no reason why you should not choose those which are most appropriate for the service. However, there are some in which the argument is so interwoven that no cutting should be done. Confirmation class. In your session on church history, consider the possibility of using the hymnal as your source book. Hymns and organ music. Have the organist play a composed hymn prelude before the singing of a hymn. This could be more interesting than listening to a dull, uninspired playing over of a tune. Hymns with slides. During certain seasons of the year, such as Christmas or Lent, an effective service can be arranged by singing appropriate hymns coupled with interpretations of famous art. Hymns as benedictions. (“Jesus, still lead on”; “Lord, dismiss us with your blessing”; “By the Babylonian rivers,” st.4.) Hymns dramatized. Interpret the historical setting, or the text itself, through drama. Hymn Concertatos. Concordia Publishing House has many festive arrangements of familiar hymns which include parts for choir, congregation, organ, and instruments. Two hymns in alternation. The Quempas Carol (“Shepherds came, their praises bringing” to the tune QUEM PASTORES LAUDAVERE) sung by the choir, and “Good Christian men, rejoice” sung by the congregation to IN DULCI JUBILO (both in the key of F) alternating stanzas as well as tunes. Hymns in Alternatim. This is related to the concertato, except that the form is simpler and there is not as much musical development. On longer hymns let various forces alternate in the presentation: congregation, choir, soloist,

    Page 88

    organ alone, women only, men, two halves of the congregation, reading, etc. (“For all the saints”). Hymns and free accompaniment. The organist can add variety by either improvising, writing out, or using a published new harmonization for various stanzas. The goal should be to provide new musical treatments which highlight certain ideas of the text, and to provide a climax in the last stanza. The voices must sing only the melody, and they should be informed when they are expected to give up singing their parts for a greater good. For an extensive list of materials see Journal of Church Music, April 1977, p. 17. Hymns in canon. A canon is a “round,” and such tunes as MENDELSSOHN , TALLIS’ CANON, GRAFENBERG, and WEDLOCK can be sung as rounds. Hymns and descants. A descant is an added ornamental melody above the tune which may be sung by sopranos (adults or children), played by instruments , or by the organist on a pungent stop such as the trumpet. Words of assurance. The Worshipbook at page 661 lists 24 hymns for use after confession and pardon. (See also “Come, Holy Spirit, God and Lord,” st. 3; “God is love: let heaven adore Him,” st. 3.) Doxologies and Glorias. (“A hymn of glory let us sing,” st. 3; “All creatures of our God and King,” last st.; “Greater of the stars at night,” st. 3; “Now thank we all our God,” st. 3). Hymn Festivals. An entire service can be built out of hymns used in various ways to develop a theme, or hymns can be chosen to take the place of the various movements of a service of worship.

    Ill

    In a thought provoking article in Motive in February 1953, Dr. S. Paul Schilling of Westminster Theological Seminary in Maryland wrote, “Unfortunately, not all of the discords in church music are struck audibly by singers and accompanists. Many are produced by theological concepts out of harmony with Christian truth, by religious ideas which contradict the actual experiences and beliefs of the worshipers, or by words which lack any clear meaning whatever.” He adds, ” . . . sometimes people are made to sing the opposite of what they believe.” Because some theological position is implicit if not explicit in every hymn, because sincerity in hymn singing requires understanding and agreement with the beliefs voiced, and because hymns have an incalculable power to spread error as well as truth, every hymn chosen needs to be examined, studied, and considered carefully by the minister and musician. Here are some questions which might be asked: Does this hymn say something worth saying? Is its message in accord with New Testament teaching and our highest Christian experience and insight? Is the hymn selfishly individualistic, or does it reflect a concern for all? Does it recognize the claims of both time and eternity? Or does it, like so many so-called “gospel” songs, focus solely with the beginning and end of Christian life on earth—conversion and heaven?

    Page 89

    Is the language in keeping with the significance of its ideas? Does it avoid empty repetition of hackneyed phrases? Is it universally true, but personally applicable? Can a congregation sing it as a valid corporate expression and experience? Is it lyrical and singable, and does it fit the tune to which it is wedded so that the meter and matter blend? Is its symbolism meaningful? Are its images understandable and healthy? Does it have unity of thought balanced with variety of treatment? Is there a fundamental simplicity which is reflected in a striking and memorable first line? Does it stretch the mind, the imagination, and the spirit? Is there a good balance between the objective and subjective? Are feeling and thought in good balance? Is it positive rather than negative in tone? Is this the best available statement of this particular truth? Does the hymn add to beauty and truth the element of “claritas,” which might be defined as splendor? Does it have the indefinable stamp of greatness and magnificence which marks great art in all forms? There is no perfect hymn, but in choosing hymns these are some of the questions which may guide you in deciding what words and thoughts will be put into the mouths and hearts of a worshiping congregation. What they sing is important. The mind must be turned on with the voice. Concentration is always one measure of consecration. That is why Paul wrote, “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the mind also.” (1 Cor. 14:15) And who guides the choice of hymns? You do! The minister, then is probably the most important person to church music, for its level cannot rise higher than the minister’s estimation of its importance in the life of the church. F. Pratt Green, whose hymns are enriching the contemporary church, has written a hymn which sums up the matter well:

    When, in man’s music, God is glorified, And Adoration leaves no room for pride, It is as though the whole creation cried: Alleluia!

    How oft in making music, we have found A new dimension in the world of sound, As worship moved us to a more profound: Alleluia!

    And did not Jesus sing a Psalm that night When utmost evil strove against the light? Then let us sing, for whom he won the fight: Alleluia! Let every instrument be tuned for praise! Let all rejoice who have a voice to raise! And may God give us faith to sing always: Alleluia!

    (Oxford University Press)

  • Discipline in an Age of ‘Human Potential’

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 24

    Discipline in an Age of “Human Potential”

    John B. Rogers, Jr. Davidson College Presbyterian Church, Davidson, North Carolina

    It is not discipline, but self-expression that is the popular concern of our time. Interest is focused on “doing your own thing” and “being yourself and not on commitment to someone or something beyond oneself. The approach of Lent, however, calls us to reflect on discipline and its place in the Christian life, and perhaps even to preach on discipline in an age of “human potential.” I. To begin with, we need to reclaim and clarify the word “discipline” for the life of faith. Discipline has become a negative word in our time. It connotes strict authority, severity, narrowness. The dictionary definition mentions rules, correction, and punishment. Discipline frequently is used to describe some regimen which sets oneself or one’s group apart, and which is characterized by an attitude of separateness, if not superiority. But this has not always been the case, for discipline is essentially a positive word. It comes from the Latin discipulus, the same as the word “disciple,” and it has primarily to do with following someone or some example, giving oneself over to some person or idea, learning or being grasped by some teaching or influence. At its deepest level, therefore, discipline is grounded in a relationship and takes shape as a response to Another. It is neither self-initiated, nor selfcentered , nor self-controlled. Rather, it is contingent upon and defined in relation to something, or better, Someone, beyond the self. II. In terms of the Christian life, discipline is always properly understood in the context of grace. In the best sense of the word, it is neither an ideal which we can or must realize, nor a goal which we can or must achieve. Rather, Christian discipline, understood aright, presupposes the gracious initiative of God in Christ, who calls us into a relationship in which we may grow in grace (and in understanding), to the end that we may know and love as we are known and loved. The presupposition of any proper Christian discipline is, therefore, “justification by grace through faith alone.” This biblical and Reformed doctrine stands guard against discipline of any kind becoming a “work” whereby we seek to justify ourselves. Our piety, our “having faith,” our surrendering ourselves to God, cannot properly become a self-justifying discipline. In the section of Church Dogmatics on “Justification by Faith Alone,” Karl Barth warns against faith becoming a “work”:

    Because faith is obedient humility, . . . it will and must exclude any cooperation of human action in the matter of man’s justification. It will and must be alone in this matter. It will and must be only faith. If it hesitated to be this, if in the recognizing and apprehending of justification, it tried to base itself on any human action which takes place either before faith or in faith or as a result of faith, it would cease to be obedience; it would cease to be the humility of obedience. . . . There would be no real renunciation and No to prijde, no real distaste for it, seeing that in addition to the fact that he believes man would still be leaning and relying on himself.1

    Page 25

    The attempt to realize one’s full personhood cannot properly become a selfjustifying discipline. We can no more save ourselves by some possible technique designed to fulfill our “human potential” than we can by our piety. And the presumption that we can do so is ultimately its own prison or asylum, as Begreffenfeldt , the superintendent of the insane asylum in Ibsen’s Peer Gynty testifies. Speaking to the hero of the drama who is so intent on “being himself,” Begreffenfeldt says Outside themselves? Oh no, you’re wrong. It’s here that men are most themselves— Themselves and nothing but themselves— Sailing with outspread sails of self. Each shuts himself in a cask of self, The cask stopped with a bung of self And seasoned in a well of self. None has a tear for others’ woes Or cares what any other thinks. We are ourselves in thought and voice— Ouselves up to the very limit; And, consequently, if we want An Emperor, it’s very clear That you’re the man.2

    Not even the discipline of writing an article on discipline for a budding “Preacher’s Journal” or preaching on the subject of discipline can justify. Those of us who are tempted to think we have written something definitive which, along with “the Word of our God” shall “stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8), need to heed the humorous but poignantly expressed quotation from Luther which Karl Barth wrote to himself in his own printed copy of the second edition of his Epistle to the Romans. Karl Barth, to his dear Karl Barth, 1922:

    If you feel or imagine that you.are right and suppose that your book, teaching, or writing is a great achievement . . . then, my dear man, feel your ears. If you are doing so properly, you will find that you have a splendid pair of big, long, shaggy asses’ ears. . . .3

    “Justification by grace through faith alone” reminds us that any discipline, however well-intentioned, which lands us back in the circle of our own works, or encourages us to curve in upon ourselves, ignores the deeper insight that what we most want and need is not some pious or psycho-religious or theological or ideological regimen behind which we can hide our self-centeredness. What we most want and need is One to whom we can be justified in belonging for time and for eternity, and in relation to whom any discipline in our life and in our life together is judged and redeemed. III. A third observation follows hard by these words about grace as the norm and context of Christian discipline. It is this: Christian discipline properly takes shape in and is nurtured by the community of faith. Christian faith is intensely personal, but it is not private. If the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is the great dramatic symbol of our redemption in Christ, the gathering of

    Page 26

    disciples around the Lord’s Table, from the Upper Room to the present, underscores the truth that in redemption we are given to one another in the church.4 The Christian church is an integral part of the Gospel; it is not an optional “extra.” Our forbears used to say extra ecclesia non salus, “outside the church there is no salvation.” That has been understood and used as a mark of narrowness , judgment, and exclusivism. And that is unfortunate. What this old phrase means in the deepest sense is that the church is God’s gift to us. We have been given to one another in and through Christ as the worshiping, believing community in which personal faith is lived, nurtured, and sustained. Christian discipline in this community offers a way, however imperfect, of getting beyond ourselves. By its very nature, the kind of discipline about which we are speaking here draws one away from oneself toward another (God in Christ, and brothers and sisters in faith) in response and in relation to whom one attempts to live and act as a member of a community of faith. Without this other-directedness both in content and context even the most well-intentioned discipline, as we have seen, can easily become narcissism—just another sophisticated kind of tinkering with ourselves. And yet here again we must say that even at its best, Christian discipline is not finally another technique—not even a technique for getting beyond ourselves. We cannot forget ourselves any more than we can save ourselves. Perhaps, though, we can come to regard Christian discipline as a gift—a gracious opportunity which can become for us an avenue of response to God, in our life and in our life together, whereby we have ourselves with all of our “human potential” taken off our hands and given back again in what is the outworking of Jesus’ teaching about losing one’s life in order to find it. IV. In thinking about what Christian discipline in our time ought to emphasize , let me draw on what I have said up to this point and suggest that we in the church today need a discipline which will support us in a recovery of faith—in a rediscovery of what it means to trust and believe in God. I say this because I am becoming increasingly convinced that many of the popular currents in the church, despite certain positive insights and helpful judgments which have come from them, have emerged from a theological vacuum. The neopentecostal movement, the “technique evangelism” movement, the human potential movement, the process management movement, and psychic research into “life after life,” are all the result of a deep-seated crisis of faith in God. They each represent, in their own way, the temptation to overlook too quickly what we have already been given in and through the Gospel and the church, and to search for “something more” in the Christian life. The “something more” may be an emotional experience through which we seek to “know” what can only be believed—a kind of theological lust which seeks gratification apart from the intellectual and personal discipline which any faith/love relationship demands. The “something more” may be a strategy of evangelism whereby the great richness of the Gospel is reduced to a trite, catchy formula (“4 Spiritual Laws” or “How to Give Christ Charge of Your Life”), although the mystery of the grace and love of God in Christ is utterly beyond any “technique.” The “something more” may be a psychological technique through which we convince ourselves that we can construct and lay claim to an identity which in truth can only be given by Him who creates and names and redeems us. The “something more”

    Page 27

    may be an organizational process by which we seek to manage and control that to which we can only respond. The “something more” may be some new “proof or “evidence” of immortality whereby we convince ourselves that the key to existence and to life, now and always, is within ourselves instead of beyond ourselves. But whatever “something more” we happen to find, we can be sure it is something we have added. For God can hardly give us “something more” than He has already done in the gift of Himself in Christ through whom we are, in turn, given to one another in the community of faith and hope and love. There is only one thing “more”: growth in this grace and fellowship as children of God and servants of Christ. And this, I want to suggest, is what Christian discipline is all about. V. The best model I can suggest for discipline in the church today is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from his cell in Tegal Prison in 1944, called the “arcane discipline.” By arcane discipline, Bonhoeffer meant a secret, silent, unobtrusive, unselfconcious, unsensational discipline of the worship of God through prayer and meditation, creed and hymn, word and sacrament, in the context of the community of faith. Richard Baxter and Brother Lawrence called it “the practice of the presence of God.” What Bonhoeffer suggested, and what I would commend to us all as something worth recovering in our time, is quite radical, but it is not new. It is radical in that it goes to the root of Christian discipline by reminding us that the focus of the Christian life is the worship and service of God. This arcane discipline of worship and service is, suggested Bonhoeffer, something precious which grows out of and gives expression to the central event of life, namely, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Like other “formative” events of life, the Christ-event transcends our understanding and resists our control. Moreover, the discipline of worship in which this event is acknowledged is not amenable to sensationalism, trivialization, or gimmickry. It cannot be forced upon people. It cannot be achieved by some technique. It cannot be politicized or co-opted to sanctify some ideology or some momentary agenda within the realm of personal, or even Christian, concern. It is most certainly not to become the way by which we assert ourselves as Christians, or as a Christian community, or set ourselves over against others, whether inside or outside the church. In short, Bonhoeffer’s “arcane discipline” is a thing as unsensational and as unspectacular as our responsible participation in the life of the church. Our identity as children of God and as servants of Christ does not allow us to claim privilege or status, or to set ourselves apart. It is arcane, secret, and not without an element of mystery which we cannot fathom, Therefore, as chosen and elect men and women, we do not make this identity a matter of privilege or the occasion for a separate and distinct religious life on the basis of some “possible” discipline. It is, rather, a part of the mystery of the thing that our lives are instructed, enriched, and blessed by preaching, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, and that we worship, confess, and sing praise within the congregation. What this “arcane discipline” of worship and participation in the Christian community offers those of us in the ministry, it seems to me, is a new appreciation of the so-called “traditional means of grace” by which God himself works among us. It offers a renewed challenge and encouragement to get on with our

    Page 28

    knitting as ministers of the Word and sacrament, as teaching elders, and as pastors. It offers us a much needed reminder that Christian discipline is a gift. “Christian community” said Bonhoeffer (and we can add, Christian discipline), “is like the Christian’s sanctification.”

    It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature . The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases. Christian brotherhood [community, discipline] is not an ideal which we must realize; it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it.5

    1 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1956), IV/1, 627.

    2 Cited by George A. Buttrick in Prayer (Nashville: Abingdon, 1942), 37.

    3 Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 121.

    4 See William Van Arnold’s “The Pastoral Visit Revisited” in the Union Theological Seminary

    in Virginia publication “As I See It,” February, 1977, for an excellent statement of the practical and pastoral implications of this truth. 5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (New York: Harper and Row, 1954), 30.

  • The Spirit and Witness: Listening to Luke 4:18-20

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 34

    The Spirit and Witness:

    Listening to Luke 4:18-20

    Shirley C. Guthrie, Jr.

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    I. WHO HAS THE SPIRIT? Well, the Christians are bickering among themselves again. In some ways it is just another version of the old argument about whether the Christian individual or the Christian community is more important. Which takes precedence —individuals who are born again, converted, saved and claimed by the Gospel; or the church with its preaching and sacraments, creeds and confessions ? But now that old agrument has taken a new twist: who has the Spirit? Individual Christians who have personally experienced and manifested in their lives the working of the Spirit, or the church to whom the Spirit is promised? Is the Spirit more likely to be present in a home or dorm room where a small group of like-minded Christians gather, or in an ordinary worship service on Sunday morning or in a seminary chapel? Who are right—the charismatics and pentecostals and so-called pietists, or plain, old, ordinary, everyday church members? Both sides, of course, quote scripture to prove they are right. One side likes the book of Acts and defends its claim to the Spirit by pointing out the repetition in individuals today of the same personal experiences and supernatural gifts we hear about when the first Christians were baptized with the Spirit. The other side likes Paul and defends its claim to the Spirit by quoting those texts which say that the Spirit is given for the common good, to edify and build up the church. The Paul-quoters say the Acts-quoters are a bunch of fanatics who are destroying the church with their self-righteous spiritualistic individualism. And the Acts-quoters say the Paul-quoters are squelching the Spirit with their boring , dead, uncommitted institutional church. Then of course there are the peace-makers who assure us that both sides are right. It is not a matter of individual or community but individual and community, not Acts or Paul but Act and Paul, not personal religious experience or the church but Spirit-filled individuals and a Spirit-filled church. Nobody is wrong. Everybody is right. So why don’t we just stop fighting and be friends. “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” And into the middle of our petty bickering and our trivial peace-making comes one who says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” That simple word of Jesus is at the same time Judgment and Good News to all of us, whether we take one side or the other in the tug of war for the Spirit, or try to cover up our deep differences with the good Southern Prebyterian strategy of pacifying all sides with the assurance that everybody is right.

    Page 35

    Judgment “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” That is first of all a word of judgment. It means that the Holy Spirit belongs neither to the church with its preaching and sacraments, its creeds and confessions, its formal workship services, its 341 Ponce de Leon, and its seminaries; nor to individual Christians with their personal religious experiences, their prayer groups, their “praise the Lords” for the peace and joy they have found. The Holy Spirit “belongs” to Jesus Christ and him only. He only “has” the Spirit. It is not the church as such but the Lord of the church, not those who love the Lord but the Lord whom they love, on whom the Spirit rests. That means that if we want the assurance of the Spirit’s presence in our own lives, we cannot analyze our little or great Christian experiences or the little or great achievements of the church. Self-analysis only proves how little of the Spirit we have and how much we need to receive. If there is any assurance of what the Spirit can do or is doing in our lives, it cannot come from our confidence in our personal or corporate spirituality (which is always partial, fleeting, and questionable); it can only come from our confidence in him on the whom the Spirit rests completely, always, without qualification or reservation. If we want to bear witness to others of the life-giving, renewing work of the Spirit, we cannot advertize either our individual lives or the life of the church. Self-advertisement can only lead others to doubt—or maybe laugh at—our claims about the life-giving, renewing work of the Spirit. The only convincing witness is the proclamation, not of us Christians and our church, but of him who alone has the right to say, “Look! here is where the Spirit dwells.” Who has the Spirit? Only Jesus. Not us. We cannot tell ourselves, and we cannot boast to others that we are Spirit-filled people. In the presence of the one who alone is Spirit-filled, we can only confess to ourselves and admit to others how spiritually impoverished, how desperately needy we too are, we Christians, despite all our personal religious experience and despite even the very best the church is.

    Good News But judgment is never the last word in scripture. The last word is always Good News—Good News hidden even in the most terrible judgments. And so it is also with this saying of Jesus. And this is the Good News: we do not have to get involved in the selfdefeating arguments about which Christians are more Spirit-filled, and therefore better, than other Christians. We don’t have to start out on those arrogant, ridiculous, sure-to-fail arguments about what we Christians and our church have that others do not have, and thus how much richer and better we are than non-Christians. We don’t have to make any claims about ourselves. All we have to do is bear witness in word and in deed to another who can claim that “the Spirit of the Lord is on me.” And that is not all. The same Jesus who alone has the Spirit of the Lord promises to share that Spirit precisely with those who confess themselves to be

    Page 36

    and always to remain in themselves spiritually impoverished people who desperately need over and over again to receive his Spirit. He promises to give his Spirit to those who do not and cannot and never will have it as their own private or corporate possession. Because of who he is and what he promises, we who never can say of ourselves that we have the Spirit may nevertheless receive the Spirit. We who can never claim that we are Spirit-filled people may nevertheless be filled with the Spirit—not as a possession we can clutch to ourselves but as a gift we may receive and continually receive afresh in the company of the one who is the Spirit-filled person.

    II. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT?

    Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” He is the one who is filled with the Holy Spirit. He is the one filled with the Spirit, the model and norm of what it means to be filled with the Spirit and thus to be a truly spiritual person. If he does not keep the Spirit to and for himself but shares it with those who live in his company, if we too may receive the Holy Spirit, the Spirit we receive can only be the Spirit which is and always remains his Spirit. So if we want to know what it means for us to be filled with the Spirit, we can only look at what happened to him when he was filled with the Spirit. The answer we get is quite different from what we would have expected on the basis of what we usually say about the Spirit. We would have expected to hear Jesus bear witness to the gifts he received when the Spirit of the Lord came upon him: how blessed he was, how much meaning he found in his life, how his worries and anxieties were relieved, how his personal problems were solved, how much love and joy and peace filled his life, how free he was from everything that separated him from God and other people. But instead he speaks, not of various gifts to be enjoyed, but of a task to fulfill. He does not list the benefits he has received but describes a job he has to do. Preach! Proclaim! Heal! Liberate! What were the consequences for him when he set out to fulfill that task? Being filled with the Holy Spirit and thus becoming a “spiritual” person meant friendship with prostitutes, dishonest business men, political revolutionaries, religious heretics, social outcasts. It meant offending the moral and religious leaders of society. It got him into trouble with the government for disturbing the peace and upsetting law and order. And finally, being a spiritual person filled with the Holy Spirit meant being arrested, tried in court, sentenced to capital punishment, and executed as a common criminal. Now we have to be careful here. If Jesus shares his Spirit with his followers, that does not mean that they become what he was or that they can or should try to do what he did. Christians are not little messiahs or saviors on the world. But those who live in the company of him who was and is the Messiah and Savior, and receive from him the same Spirit which he received, can expect some correspondence, similarities, between what being filled with the Spirit meant for him and what it means for them. They can expect in their own way to participate in the task the Spirit annointed him to fulfull, and they can expect also to share the consequences.

    Page 37

    So: we must be careful if we pray that we will be filled with the Holy Spirit. Our prayer might be answered! The presence of the Spirit hurts. It does not mean first of all a lot of gifts and benefits to be enjoyed; it means a very dangerous job to do. It does not pay off; it costs. It does not solve all our problems; it gives us new and more difficult problems than we ever imagined. It does not give us everything we want; it demands everything we have. The Holy Spirit does not help us escape from the dirty, ugly, sinful world into the happiness, joy, and peace of another higher, purer world; he sends us into this world with all its sin and suffering and need. He does not let us settle down in the pleasant company of other people who love the Lord; he sends us to befriend people who are immoral, irreligious, and threatening to the economic security and political stability of our society. In short, being filled with the Holy Spirit means risking the consequences of following the one who, just because he was a truly spiritual person, was despised and rejected—despised and rejected, not first of all by the godless sinners and powerless outsiders (they were his friends), but by the God-fearing, law-abiding, powerful insiders. So take warning: if that is what it means, are any of us sure that we really want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? Do we really want to be truly spiritual people? Or is what we really want only a little theological orthodoxy, moral superiority, and self-serving piety—precisely the kind of spirituality that could not tolerate the one who was filled with the Holy Spirit? Now of course we would not understand what being filled with the Spirit meant for Jesus himself and what it means for those with whom he shares his Spirit if that were all we said. Talk about a difficult task and warning about its dangerous consequences is not the last word but only the next-to-the-last word about what the Spirit did in and through Jesus and what he does in and through those who live in the company of Jesus. The last word in this particular passage of scripture, as in all of scripture, is a word not about a great task but about a great gift, not a word of warning but a word off promise. But we will not be willing or able to hear the great last word if we are not willing first to hear in all its seriousness the next-to-the-last word. If we want to know what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we must think first of all, not of all kinds of gifts and benefits, but precisely of a dangerous task. For listen: this is what the Holy Spirit is up to and where he is to be found and experienced:

    The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has annointed me to preach good news to poor people. He has sent me to proclaim release to captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed —in short, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord (that is, the coming of the justice of the Kingdom of God for the weak and powerless, excluded and exploited).*

    If we are not willing to look for and experience the presence and work of the Spirit where that is going on, we never will learn what it means to be filled with the Spirit. On the other hand, if we are willing, then we will also discover something else: the hard task the Spirit gives those to whom he comes is itself his great gift, the greatest gift of all, far better than all the little gifts we usually dream of when we talk about receiving the Holy Spirit and his “benefits.”

    Page 38

    III. WHAT DOES THE HOLY SPIRIT DO?

    Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” because he has given me a great task—a mission—to fulfill. And what is his mission as one on whom the Spirit has come? Or to put it the other way around, what is it that the Spirit is going to do in and through this one on whom he rests and in whom he dwells? We would have expected some religious talk from Jesus in answer to this question—talk about sin and repentance, conversion and faith, sanctification and salvation. And of course in other places in the New Testament we do hear such talk. But in this, Luke reports Jesus himself summarizing everything the Spirit sent him to do by talking, not about religious issues and problems, but about economics and politics. Not a word is said about lost sinners who need their souls saved or unbelievers who need to be converted. The only people Jesus mentions as those to and for whom he has been sent as a Spirit-filled person are the poor, enslaved, physically handicapped, and oppressed—people who need their bodily, political, and financial needs met. Our first inclination is probably to spiritualize the text and interpret it to mean that Jesus was talking about people who are “spiritually” poor and blind, captives of unbelief, and oppressed by their sinfulness. There is some truth in this line of thought, and it is in fact developed in other places in the New Testament. But that kind of spiritualizing is blocked here by the fact that Jesus is quoting the words of Isaiah which unmistakably and inescapably speak about social justice. Of course it is the justice of the Kingdom of God he is talking about. But that is just the point. The Kingdom of God is not an other-worldly Kingdom but the rule of God’s justice breaking into this world, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. So there’s no escaping what the text plainly says: the Spirit of God is present and at work, and is to be found and experienced, not first of all in the religious sphere, but in the political-economic sphere. True spirituality is expressed , not first of all in religious thoughts and acts and experiences, but in activity aimed at social justice for those who are weak, threatened, excluded, and exploited. Now once again, of course that is not everything to be said about the mission of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit. Of course the justice of the Kingdom of God involves forgiving and overcoming sin, faith, repentance, new birth, sanctification, eternal salvation. But we dare not hurry on too fast past the political-social-economic implications of Jesus’ saying to more orthodox (and more comfortable) ground. If we do not take seriously what is said here in all its one-sidedness, everything else we can and must say would only prove to be not more but less. If we are going to insist on reading the Bible as the literal Word of God anywhere, we have to read it literally here. What if we did?

    Thanksgiving

    We would be very sour and mean-spirited Christians if our first response were not to give thanks and praise the Lord. Good news for poor people! Release

    Page 39

    to captives! Sight to the blind! Freedom for the oppressed! And all that not just as a beautiful dream in the heads of a few liberal do-gooders or a terrible threat from some radical revolutionaries, but as the cause which the Lord himself has taken up, poured out his mighty Spirit to set in motion, and sent his Son filled with the Spirit to accomplish. However staggering may seem the problem of hunger and poverty; however powerful the forces of injustice and oppression in South Africa and in Israel and Jordan—and in the USA; however few and weak the forces of those who care; however cowardly and unwilling those who should care but don’t; however frightening the dwindling sources of energy and the consequent concentration of power in the hands of fewer and fewer industrial and political leaders—the justice of the Kingdom of God on earth is going to prevail! How can we be so sure? Because the mighty power of the Holy Spirit has been let loose in the world. Because by the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ was conceived and born to “scatter the proud in the imagination of their hearts, put the mighty down from their thrones, exalt those of low degree and fill the hungry with good things.” Because by the sovereign power of the Holy Spirit not just anybody but Jesus Christ himself took up the cause of the poor and captive and blind and oppressed. Because by the sovereign power of the same Holy Spirit he was raised from the dead and designated Son of God in power over all the authorities and principalities and powers that resist the rule of God in the world. Because, in short, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit which happened in Jesus, and through him continues to happen, means not just comfort and joy and peace for individual Christians, or the upbuilding of the church, but politics and economics—the dawning and absolutely sure victory of the justice of the Kingdom of God on earth.

    Confession of Sin

    But if that is so and we do take it seriously, as soon as we have given thanks and praised the Lord for the outpouring of his mighty Spirit, we have in the very next breath to confess once again what unspiritual people we are. All of us (at least all of us white, affluent American Christians): conservatives and liberals; those of us who are proud of our piety and those of us who are proud of our lack of piety; those of us who are so preoccupied with our own spiritual needs and blessings that we have no time for the poor and oppressed; and those of us who feel superior to those self-righteous pietists because we have a “social conscience ,” talk a good game, get angry, feel guilty, maybe even cry a little when we look at all that poverty and suffering and oppression, but don’t do anything. Even if we give to the church or United Appeal or Care, or try to live a simple life-style, or participate in some worthy social service projects, simply by virture of the fact that we are white Americans, we are a part of a society whose greedy consumption of food and natural resources, whose lust for comfort and profit, deprives millions of people of what they need just to survive. Deliberately or not, we ourselves are the oppressors from whom the oppressed need to be freed. If the Holy Spirit is at work where the struggle for the justice of the Kingdom of God is going on and will be won, it is to a great extent without our

    Page 40

    cooperation, despite our passive or active resistance. We are an unspiritual people, and we dwell in the midst of an unspiritual people.

    Invitation and Promise Finally, these words of Jesus imply a gracious invitation to us unspiritual people to become truly spiritual and the promise that we not only can but will be filled with the same Spirit that rested upon him. I confess that when I look at the world in which we live, and at the church, and at us Christians, it is hard for me to say what has to be said now. It seems so improbable, so inconceivable—so impossible. But it has to be said and can be said nevertheless: the same Jesus (the same Lukan Jesus) who said at the beginning of his ministry (on his way to the cross), “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” also said at end of his ministry (after his resurrection), “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses . . . to the end of the earth.” Very quickly, three pieces of good news wrapped up in that promise: 1. When the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you shall be my witnesses —witnesses to Christ. Thank God we don’t have to get involved in the disastrous enterprise of bearing witness to ourselves or to the church, and what the Spirit has done for us and given to us, and how great we are. We can be witnesses to the one who, filled with the Spirit, really is at work bringing about the justice of the Kingdom of God in the world. 2. Only witnesses. Not substitutes for him who are impowered to do what he does, or who have the terrible burden of having to do what he does. Just witnesses, invited to the modest task of participating in the mission he began long before we ever came along, the mission he even now is fulfilling and will complete with or without our feeble, blundering efforts to help. Witnesses who therefore can throw ourselves into the battle with confidence and hope just because its outcome does not depend on us. 3. You shall receive power—not just power to become impressive religious personalities, but something much greater than that—power to be and do and say what is necessary to fulfill the task the Spirit gives us to fulfill. For at the same time the Spirit gives us our mission, he also promises the ability to fulfill it. He gives what he demands. We can count on it. What specifically we will do and how we will go about being such witnesses when the power of the Holy Spirit comes upon us and our church, I honestly don’t know—not even for myself, much less for anyone else. Maybe we don’t need to know. Maybe it’s enough if we will just listen to the good news we have been told, believe it, and set out seriously to learn what it means for us as individuals and for the church.

    The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has annointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed , to bring the justice of the Kindgom of God on earth. . . . And you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit (the same Spirit) has come upon you, and you shall be my witnesses . . . to the end of the earth.

  • Teaching Theology in the Local Congregation

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 76

    Teaching Theology in the Local

    Congregation

    (This article was prepared as a lecture in which a significant amount of material had to be compressed in a slot of time, and is printed here in that form.)

    John H. Leith Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia

    The teaching of theology in the local congregation happens best when it is not planned or programmed, when it flows spontaneously and naturally out of the theologically informed activities of church leaders, especially ministers. In a fundamental sense the teaching of theology cannot be programmed, contrived, and arranged. Certainly it never takes place by committee or bureaucratic decree . It happens when theologians are present in a congregation that is concerned with the basic issues of life, with the questions and issues which are the responsibility of theology.

    I

    The teaching of theology begins with the theologian and with the work of theology itself. Hence the question with which we have to begin is What is theology? Theology is first of all sustained, critical reflection. It is never simply enthusiasm . It is not prayer, though some theologians, such as Anselm in the Proslogion and Augustine in the Confessions, have attempted to write theology as prayer. But this is the exception and a proper method only for genius. Theology is not the language of awe, of reverence, or of adoration. It is not the language of immediate religious experience, but critical rational reflection on that experience. Theology in a very broad sense may be conceived as critical reflection upon the meaning of life. Nevertheless it is difficult to arrive at any satisfactory definition of theology that does not have to do with God. Yet just as theology has to do with God, it also has to do with human life. As Calvin said, we cannot speak of God without speaking of man, and we cannot speak of man without speaking of God. Hence serious concern with the meaning of human existence is an indispensable dimension of the theological task. For our purposes theology may be defined in this way. Theology is (1) critical reflection (2) about God, about the created order, about human existence , and about the faith itself, (3)’in the light of what is perceived to be the decisive revelation of God in Jesus Christ as attested in Scripture (4) in dialogue with the church’s understanding of that message, and (5) in dialogue with the experience of the human community, especially with human experience in the Christian community today.

    Page 77

    The task of theology is best understood as a dialogue. The dialogue is openended . There is no final theology. As Barth put it, theology is written for time not eternity. The dialogue is also a human work and therefore fallible. The dialogue takes place in community. The immediate community is the church. The theologian learns from the whole Christian community, and the work of the theologian is subject to the critical review of other theologians. Theology is also written in the context of the whole human community. It is a public task. It must commend itself as a responsible intellectual enterprise that can maintain its intellectual integrity even among those who do not share its presuppositions. Good theology is never written in private. Theologians can be grouped or typed by the way in which they participate in this dialogue. Karl Barth wrestled with the Biblical message and with the church’s understanding of that message until he understood what he had to say in his time on the basis of what the prophets and Apostles said in their time. Reinhold Niebuhr also wrestled with Scripture, though less systematically than Barth, and with the church’s understanding of that message, but he also heard what social scientists were saying, the question they raised for the faith and how the faith was to be related to the social facts of human existence. Other theologians have given special attention to psychotherapy (Tillich), philosophy (Schubert Ogden), physical sciences (Karl Heim), and world religions that justify any assertion and to the demands of language usage, so that the statement of theology will be clear and intelligible. The nature of the theological task means that the theologian has a mastery of scripture and the history of doctrine, but it also means that he or she reads widely. In principle, all truth, as Justin Martyr understood long ago, can be incorporated into the statement of Christian faith to its enrichment. The nature of the theological task means that the theologian must be alive intellectually to the best thought of the time and sensitive to the full ranges of human experience and emotion. What now are the tests of theology? How can good theology be distinguished from poor theology or false theology? There are two basic tests for any theology that claims to be Christian. (Cf. writings of Outler, Ogden, Tracy.) The first is the appropriateness of a theology as a statement of the Christian message. Theology is the self test that the church makes of its proclamation. The word of God in preaching is examined in the light of the Word of God in Scripture insofar as the written word attests the Word of God in Jesus Christ. For Barth the primary problem before the church is heresy. If the church can get the message right, the message itself under the power of the Holy Spirit will create its own response. There is something very compelling about the message when it is clearly articulated. No one who has witnessed the work of some of the mass evangelists can doubt the power of simple indicative statements in the contexts of mass audiences, even of indicative statements that cannot stand up to critical scrutiny. The first task of theology is the articulation of an appropriate statement of the content of the Christian revelation. Theology must demonstrate its right to be called Christian. The first test is the appropriateness of the message. The second test of any theology is its adequacy in accounting for and in making sense out of human experience, especially human experience in the church. The kind of orthodoxy that once dominated our church obscured this characteristic of all good theology. Doctrine was conceived as truth that could

    Page 78

    be memorized ana accepted as true. Believing became a form of work righteousness , of merit before God. Paul Tillich wisely related justification by grace through faith to doctrine or beliefs as well as to works. The Christian is saved not by right beliefs but by the mercy of God. The role of doctrine in the Christian life is to illuminate, to clarify, and to correct the experience of the believer. Any faith that endures has to illuminate the human experience of meaning amid the absurdities of existence. It must explicate common human joys and common human sorrows. It must deal in a meaningful way with the great human facts of birth and death, the sense of being obligated, the reality of evil, and the depth and transcendence of the human self. The Christian claim is that Christian faith does more justice to the facts, makes more sense out of life, illuminates human experience as does no other faith. Augustine said long ago, “We believe in order to understand.” He was convinced that there is a faith factor in all understanding. A faith commitment, either explicit or implicit, always enables us to put together the diverse facts of experience in some meaningful way. Every one lives in the light of some faith. To be human is to live by faith. The conviction that life is worth living, for example, is the expression of some faith. The necessity of deciding, of acting, forces us to live in the light of some faith about the meaning of the universe and of human life. The fundamental human difference is not between believers and unbelievers but between believers with different faith commitments, not between faith and facts but between faiths. The teaching of theology involves the negative task of uncovering the faiths by which people live and of subjecting those faiths to critical scrutiny as to their adequacy in accounting for and illuminating the decisive experiences of life. The positive task of teaching Christian theology is to indicate how Christian faith illuminates, organizes, and gives meaning to the facts of experience better than any other categories of understanding. Faith, as Anselm said, seeks understanding or intelligibility. (Fides quaerens intellectum.) Faith does not seek demonstration or proof. It is validated as it illuminates our experience. Augustine once said that faith is like friendship. Hence the nature and function of faith can best be explicated by analogies from human relations. There is no way for example to prove friendship. Every possible evidence is always subject to another interpretation . My faith that my friend is true is confirmed or undercut by the way my faith in my friend illuminates and makes sense out of my experience with my friend. Thus far three fundamental points should be clear about the teaching of theology. First, the teaching of theology requires the explication of the relation of Christian faith to what is perceived by the Christian community to be the decisive revelation of God in Jesus Christ as attested in Scripture. Secondly, the teaching of theology demands the explication of the ways in which Christian faith illuminates and makes sense out of the personal, social, political, and economic experiences of life. Thirdly, the teaching of theology requires the uncovering of the diverse faiths by which modern people live, even people within the church.

    Page 79

    π How then shall theology be taught in the local church? What is required for the teaching of theology? The first and fundamental requirement for the teaching of theology is a minister who is a theologian. The decisive significance for the minister of compe­ tence in theology should be clear. Ministers admittedly have to have many competencies. They are promoters, administrators, counsellors, fund raisers. Yet all of these competencies will be duplicated in the community, and usually exceeded. The one competence that ministers have that is essential to their work as ministers and that is not likely to be duplicated in the community is compe­ tence as theologians. In any case, it is critical for the teaching of theology. No one can teach what he or she does not know. Furthermore, theology cannot be taught well in a church until the teacher has not only mastered theology with mind but has assimilated it in life. Good theology requires not simply the mas­ tery of books but the maturing of time, the passages of life and a broad and deep range of experience. It is not likely that a young person can be a good theologian. Even much academic theology is poor because its practitioners have not lived long enough to have experienced it, or have personally appropriated it in a restricted range of experiences. Now it must be admitted that many ministers are not competent theologi­ ans. Some believe more with their hearts than they know with their minds, and this knowledge of the heart is communicated in human relationships. Some ministers are community good will people who go about doing good things. Unquestionably this is a useful function, and it pleases many people in and out of the church. But it ought not to be confused with the function of a minister of the Word. Some ministers are court jesters, who relieve the tensions of life with their wit and small talk. They make life bearable. Some ministers are public relation experts, some promoters, some management experts. But people in the secular community usually excel in these gifts. The minister, if he or she fulfills the role historically given in the Reformed tradition, must be a theologian who interprets, explicates, and communicates the Word of God as attested in Scrip­ ture. Certainly this is the sine qua non of teaching theology. What are the tests of theological competence? One possible test is the traditional Reformed insistence on the approbation of the people of God. In the long run this is a very good test. Do the members of the congregation have confidence in the theology of the ministers? What happens to the level of sermon taste in a congregation during a pastorate? What improvements occur in the theological literacy of the congregation? But the approbation of the people is not an adequate test in the short run. If medical doctors were allowed to practice simply on the basis of the judgment of their patients, it is likely that many quacks of the worst order with good bedside manners but with little or no medical education or knowledge would have the biggest practices. And so it is with ministers, as any good observer of American church life knows. There are other tests which we can put to ourselves, and these tests I think should be standard. 1. How many serious theological books have I read in the past year? 2. Do I know in a thorough way the theology of one of the great theologians of the church, an Augustine, Luther, or Calvin?

    Page 80

    3. Do I know in a thorough way the theology of one twentieth-century theologian, a Barth, a Brunner, or a Niebuhr? 4. Have I recapitulated in my own theological development the development of Christian theology, as it has occurred in the church? (One can wait until fifty to complete this task.) 5. Caii I talk intelligibly about basic Christian doctrines? 6. Do I feel as comfortable talking about theology as about politics? Recently I was at the Presbyterian Center when it was closed in recognition of Martin Luther King’s birthday. This observance has a good foundation, but I do not recall hearing of any effort at the Center to observe the birthday of a Calvin or an Augustine without whom it is doubtful if Martin Luther King would have been an historical possibility, without whom certainly the Presbyterian Center would never have existed. 7. Do I know enough about contemporary human experience to relate theology to it? The answer to this question involves the experience of life on a wide and deep range as well as reading such contemporary best sellers as Jastrow : When the Sun Dies; Carl Sagan: Dragons of Eden; Richard E. Leakey: Origins; Carl Degler: Place Over Time. The teaching of theology presupposes a competent theologian. Competence in theology demands the mastery, even the memorization, of a vast amount of data as well as the acquisition of the ability to comprehend ideas and to relate them and to express them in a clear and forceful way. Without this competence there is no need to talk about teaching theology. The teaching of theology also demands enthusiasm for theology, and sensitivity to theological nuances and issues. Good theology is never simply enthusiasm , but it is never without enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for theology is never a matter of will power alone. Many factors contribute to it such as personal idiosyncracy and even physical well being. But no fact is more important than the community in which one participates. The experience of the Bible as the Word of God or the experience of an event in history or nature as an act of God depends more upon the community in which one participates than it does upon the reading of a book on providence or the study of the Bible. So it is with enthusiasm for theology. It is not likely to exist apart from a supporting community, from fellowship with others who find the discussion of theology a deep and abiding joy. (Enthusiasm is a human work as indicated here, but from another perspective it is the work of the Holy Spirit for which we pray and hope.) Sensitivity to theological issues and nuances cannot be taught nor can it be acquired by a sheer act of will. But it may be developed as one lives with great theology, reads and studies the great theological works, and engages in discussion with competent theologians. The simple but inescapable fact is that competence in theology is not easily acquired. It demands patience, persistence, time, and discipline. But the rewards are worth the effort.

    m What shall we teach? First of all we must teach the Bible. The church could at one time in our

    Page 81

    culture take Biblical knowledge for granted, certainly among active church people . The Bible was a part of culture. It was taught in the public schools and read in the homes. This is no longer the case. Moreover, education theory has in the recent past minimized the importance of factual knowledge of the Bible. Church colleges have moved away from the standard courses in the Old and New Testaments usually requiring two years. The result is a radical decline in the knowledge of the content of the Bible. Yet it is difficult to know how Protestant faith can be transmitted without a factual knowledge of the Bible, including such prosaic information as the books of the Bible in order, a basic knowledge of the history of Israel, the life of Jesus, and the missionary journeys of Paul. The traditional piety of the church also included a knowledge of portions of the Bible by memory. And again it is difficult to know how the faith can be traditioned without knowledge of Scripture by memory. Secondly, we must teach the theology of the church. In recent years a great emphasis has been placed on having one’s own faith. This is essential, provided one’s own theology is appropriate and adequate. Yet the teaching of one’s own faith is hazardous because of the limitation, in some cases severe, of one’s own life. The theology of the church has been tested, corrected, and validated by the long term common sense wisdom of the church. The church, that is the people, must be protected from the personal eccentricities , from the emotional fluctuation in the beliefs of its ministers and teachers . For example, the minister at the occasion of a death is not called upon to bear witness to his or her own personal beliefs about what happens when one dies, but to the faith of the church. There must of course be a congruity and an acceptance between one’s own personal stance and the beliefs of the church, but this need not and cannot always be identical or firm. Furthermore, the theology of the church protects us from the fads of culture. Karl Marx rightly understood that theology and faith can become ideologies. Indeed there is an ideological factor in all faith, in all theology. We can and do use faith and theology to serve our own interests. This is especially true when theology is tied to special movements and causes or when it focuses upon particular themes. The danger is all the more apparent in thematic theologies that are related to particular theological and social concerns. Albert Outler once said that few diseases are more fatal to the theologian than lust for novelty and narcissistic delight in being different. The church is best served by those who are content with humbler tasks of interpreting the church’s theology. The Bible and the church’s theology have a logical, if not a chronological, priority in the teaching of the Church. Thirdly, we must teach how to think theologically and how to make ethical decisions in the context of Christian theology. In professional and academic circles there has probably been too much concern about method. In any case, all good and productive methods are determined by the content, by the substance , and by the spirit and personal commitment of the theologian. Furthermore there is no one way of doing theology or of making ethical decisions. Yet with these qualifications we need to teach what it is to think theologically and to engage in ethical reflection. Theology is more than intuition or personal conviction. It is rational critical argument that is publicly accountable to critical judgment for its assertions. The learning of theological method can best be accomplished as those who are less adept in theology live, work and converse

    Page 82

    with those who responsibly analyse issues in the context of Christian theology, and who work through complicated moral issues in the light of the faith. Fourthly, we need to teach theology by explicating how theology illuminates the common experiences of life. A religious experience is not a unique, discrete experience, but a dimension of ordinary experience. The presence of God, particularly in the experience of wonder and grace, as well as judgment, is mediated through everyday experiences. The task of preaching and teaching is to help people become alive to the divine presence. There is a fundamental difference between Pelagius and Augustine. Pelagius wanted people to become alive to God by first obeying his will. Augustine believed that a life in conformity with God’s purpose follows the experience of the grace and wonder as well as the judgment of the divine presence. The task of preaching and teaching is to help people become alive to the divine presence in the ordinary affairs of life as wonder and grace, as well as judgment. This must be done specifically and concretely. The foundation for teaching theology in the church is a minister who is a theologian, who can comprehend and relate ideas, who can express theological ideas in a clear, cogent, and forceful way, who is knowledgeable in the great theology of the church and who is able to relate theology to human experience in our time, who has an enthusiasm and sensitivity to theological nuances and issues. This a great and humbling task, but it is the task to which we have put our hands, and over a period of years it is not impossible.

  • July 4, 1978: Invitation To A Reformed-Anabaptist Debate

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 56

    July 4, 1978: Invitation To A

    Reformed-Anabaptist

    Debate

    Allen C. McSween, Jr.

    Trinity Presbyterian Church, Laurinburg, N. C.

    One of the most significant issues with which every Minister of the Word must, in some fashion, come to grips is the relationship between the Church and the civil order, or in H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic categories, the relationship between “Christ and Culture.” Such an issue is anything but academic. How one deals with it has profound implications for the whole style and scope of one’s ministry. From time to time, perhaps during this summer in preparation for preaching during “Christian Citizenship,, month (July), a minister would do well to assess his or her own understanding of this “enduring problem of Christ and cui ture/ ‘ This article is an attempt to stimulate such reflection. For myself, and I expect for most of us who graduated from mainline Protestant seminaries in the past two decades, it has been almost axiomatic that the proper stance of the Church vis-à-vis the civil order is that described by Niebuhr in terms of “Christ the Transformer of Culture/’ Most of us have carried out our ministries within that basic model, however inconsistently we may have done so. We have affirmed that because Christ is Lord over all of life, the Church has a responsibility to act within the political, social, and economic structures of society so as to express through them God’s sovereign purposes for human life. In one way or another, we have sought to “make our nation a more fit instrument for the accomplishment of the divine purposes in history.” We have argued that to withdraw from the often messy world of political action, with its inevitable compromises, is to be irresponsible. It is to fail to live out our commitment to the lordship of Christ where it counts—in the world. In conducting our ministries in light of this “transformationist” model, we have been loyal sons and daughters of John Calvin. Calvin insisted that the elect were not chosen by God for personal purity or for salavation alone, but to be the human instruments for the accomplishment of His just and loving purposes in history. In recent years, however, this understanding of the relationship of Church and civil order has come under serious question. In particular it has been challenged by representatives of a theologically articulate and politically radical form of the sectarian (or Anabaptist) tradition. Such theologians as John Howard Yoder, William Stringfellow, Jacques Ellul, and Jim Wallis have presented a powerful critique of the “transformationist” position. We in the Reformed tradition need to take seriously their critique and enter into dialogue with it. The easiest way for a pastor to do so is by subscribing to Sojourners magazine edited by Jim Wallis. Sojourners is an attractively printed monthly magazine produced by the “Sojourners Community” in Washington, D.C. It seeks to offer a radical critique of American culture from the perspective of an evangelical Christianity that is committed to “the rebuilding of the Church by discerning the times through the life and faith of biblical people.”

    Page 57

    More systematic development of this position can be found in John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus (one of the finest contemporary statements of the Christ-Against-Culture position) and Agenda for Biblical People by Jim Wallis. One of the most significant features of these works is the way in which they raise the whole issue of what constitutes “responsible political action” on the part of the Church. If you thought the Christ-Against-Culture position was basically escapist and reactionary, read these books. These “new Anabaptists” (they would prefer to be called biblical Christians, but that is begging th? issue) are absolutely insistent that Christian discipleship by its very nature is political. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God has profound political implications both individually and corporately. There is no such thing as a non-political stance of neutrality the Church can occupy. Jim Wallis puts it this way:

    The Bible teaches that personal faith divorced from an active commitment to social justice is a mockery of the gospel. . . . When someone is converted to Christ, he or she does not receive an automatic pass to celestial bliss, but is called to take up a cross and follow in obedience the one who fed the hungry, healed the sick, was a friend of all manner of men and women, and was executed as a political criminal and subversive. This is the Christ of the New Testament. There is no other. (Agenda for Biblical People, p. 49, 32)

    The old arguments against the sectarian tradition, that it is escapist, otherworldly , indifferent to the social and political realities of history, are simply not valid in regard to this contemporary expression of radical Christianity. Whatever other criticism can be made of the new Anabaptists, they cannot be accused of an indifference to social ethics. Very often their discernment and prophetic critique of American society is right on target—uncomfortably so. It is in terms of the issue of what constitutes “responsible political action” that the Anabaptists accuse us of what Wallis calls “Establishment Christianity .” He levels these charges:

    The accepted canons of political realism and economic necessity that prevail in the world’s ideological systems have increasingly dominated the discussions of what would constitute responsible Christian action in the world. That the Christian community must live and act responsibly in the world is beyond question, as is the fact that Christians have a special and decisive responsibility to the ongoing life of the world. The critical question is: Who or what determines the shape of responsible Christian action in the world? Do our norms for action derive from what the world considers to be helpful, necessary, realistic, relevant, and responsible, or do the norms of Christian responsibility derive from the biblical witness and, most crucially, from the manner of the life and death of Jesus Christ, in the world? The shape of his responsibility was in adopting the posture of a servant and going to a cross. (Agenda, p. 122)

    For those of us who have grown up theologically with the “Christian realism ” of Reinhold Niebuhr as our guide, those are important questions to ponder, even if we reject the Anabaptist position. From whence do our norms for socialpolitical action come, and are those norms as radical as the gospel we profess? No temptation is more subtle or insidious for the Church than the tempta-

    Page 58

    tion to adopt uncritically the norms and values of its culture, especially if that culture is favorable to it. Hence, the discussion of political responsibility very soon turns to the issue of idolatry. Who or what is the center of our loyalty? How do we determine what is “responsible” . . . responsible to whom, by what criteria? Is our ultimate focus of allegiance the Christ who goes to the cross in radical obedience, or is it to the culture that rewards us so well with security and prestige and comfort? The Anabaptist tradition challenges us to take a searching look at where our real values lie. Do we find ourselves in tension, if not in outright conflict, with the values of the State and culture, or has the Church “bought in” to those same values, values of conformity, success, consumption, the efficacy of violence , bigger is better, competitiveness? No where does this issue come to a head more painfully than in regard to the concerns raised by “liberation theology.” It is conceivable that what is called “liberation theology” is a fad that will pass, but the basic issues raised by “liberation theology” will not go away. They will continue to dominate the mission agenda of the Church for decades to come. The central issue is this: how are we as the Church of Jesus Christ, the Servant People of God, to relate ourselves to the desperately poor and oppressed people of the world? In particular , how are we in the affluent American Church to do so? If it is true, as the Bible so frequently affirms, that God shows special concern for the poor, the weak, and the helpless, and if He casts down the proud, the wealthy, and the powerful precisely because of their neglect or oppression of the poor, then how are we to respond concretely to the liberating God of Exodus and Easter? Such questions expose painfully my own idolatry and that of the Church. The fact is we are so caught up in the economic idolatries of our society that we can scarcely imagine what it means to identify radically with the poor. And even if we could, from whence would come the power and courage to do so? To this idolatry Wallis speaks blunt but accurate words:

    We must begin to face the harsh reality that everything the Bible says about the rich applies to us. No longer must our words put us on the side of the oppressed and our style of life put us on the side of the oppressors. Our overconsumption is theft from the poor. . . . Unless we are willing to stand with the oppressed by first breaking our attachment to wealth and comfort, all our talk of justice is sheer hypocrisy. . . . To live in radical obedience to Jesus Christ is to be identified with the poor and the oppressed . If that is not clear in the New Testament, nothing is. (Age (Agenda, p. 94)

    Ask yourself what that might mean in your local congregation with its colonial sanctuary, its 6 digit budget, its suave, well-dressed parishioners. The sectarians raise for us devastatingly hard issues that we would rather avoid, but can no longer do so. In a world of desperate hunger and poverty, where human beings are quite literally murdered by our indifference and our style of life, what will be the response of the Church whose Lord was born in an animal stable and had no place to lay his head? Even if we do not accept the sectarian approach, we cannot escape the questions they raise. Is the self-emptying Christ our model of “success” and “responsibility” in the Church and its ministry, or is the upward mobility, the “careerism” of our culture? The blunt fact is that however

    Page 59

    much we may talk about ministry to the poor, most of us simply are not prepared to give up our comfortable manses, our Presbytery-guaranteed annual incomes, the adulation of our well-to-do members and neighbors. And that is idolatry! “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” But here let us return to our original question of what constitutes responsible political action on the part of the Church in our contemporary American situation. How does the Church most faithfully carry out the political implications of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God? The sectarians argue that the Church fulfills its political task simply by being itself, by being that alternative community in the world that bears witness to a deeper reality than the politics of history. John Howard Yoder says, “the very existence of the Church is her primary task. It is in itself a proclaimation of the Lordship of Christ to the powers from whose dominion the Church has begun to be liberated” (Politics of Jesus, p. 153). An editorial in Sojourners magazine echoes the same thought:

    It is our belief . . . that authentic political existence requires an authentic personal and communal existence. Unless our sense of peoplehood is strong, unless the life we share as the body of Christ is rich and flowing, unless the gifts and presence of God’s Holy Spirit are visibly evident among us, we can never hope to understand the meaning of biblical politics . This is why the building of community is a revolutionary task at the same time that it is a pastoral task. That is why we say that the rebuilding of the Church is the single most politically responsible act men and women of faith can undertake. (July, 1977, emphasis mine)

    Those of us who have often seen our political witness taking place outside the Church need to ponder seriously such a call for the renewal of the Church. In a situation like ours, where the Church is almost indistinguishable from the remnants of “Southern culture,” it may well be that the most politically significant act would be for the Church to take seriously the living out of its profession of faith, i.e. to be what we claim to be, a fellowship of reconciled and reconciling persons, who serve as salt, light, and yeast in our culture. But to do that requires a strong sense of our identity and integrity as the People of God, and that is exactly what has too often been lacking in our common life. Until such a sense of identity and integrity is recovered, our attempts at “political realism” and “relevance” will have little significant impact. We are still playing the game by “Mr. Caesar’s rules.” The sectarians help keep us honest by reminding us how easily our attempts at “responsibility” can be coopted by our culture unless we keep clearly before us the question: Responsible to whom and by whose definition? Closely related to the issue of the identity and integrity of the Church’s profession of faith is the issue of the Church’s style of common life. However correct the Church’s moral pronouncements may be, they will have little impact on a pluralistic culture until such pronouncements are backed up by a life-style consistent with them. Unless the Church can actually and concretely demonstrate in its common life the realities of grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, and empowerment, it will fail to effect any lasting change, for all of its fine words and lofty sentiments. Ron Sider puts the matter sharply: “To ask government to legislate what the Church cannot persuade its members to live is a tragic

    Page 60

    absurdity. . . .Our attempts to restructure secular society will possess integrity only if our personal life styles—and our corporate ecclesiastical practice . . . demonstrate that we are already daring to live what we ask Washington to legislate” (Christian Century, June 8-15, 1977). If at one time a concern for the renewal of the Church was escapist, it is clearly no longer so. The rebuilding of the Church as a confessing community is a highly political act. In a culture coming apart at the seams, it may well be the single most responsible act the Church can undertake. As the 1960’s and 70’s should have taught us, the Church can never sustain a prophetic witness and ministry in the world apart from a rich and vital life of corporate worship and sacramental fellowship. One of the most helpful images of the Church coming out of the contemporary ecumenical discussions is that of the Church as a sign, the visible, firstfruits of the Kingdom that is to be, a “sacrament to the world” of the future that God wills for all humankind. If the Church is to be such a “sign to the world” of God’s liberating lordship over all of life, it cannot allow itself to be merely a pale reflection of the values of its culture. It must rediscover and reclaim its own unique identity and vocation. For a while in the 1960’s it was popular to say that “the Church must let the world write its agenda.” In a sense that is still true. Our service must take shape around the world’s concrete need. And yet, in another sense, such a cliché is highly dangerous. It tempts the Church to forget that its agenda comes from a different source, from the lively and shattering Word that calls it into being and gives it its identity, destiny, and vocation as the Servant People of God. We in the Reformed community have much to learn from our sectarian brothers and sisters in Christ. Yet, we also have much to contribute to an ongoing dialogue with them. For all of their obvious sincerity and willingness to pay the full “cost of discipleship,” the sectarian’s witness can too easily degenerate into a narrow fanaticism or a humorless puritanism, unless it is balanced by a wider view of the lordship of Christ in the world. We, too, must affirm the radical difference between Christ and all forms of culture, but the line between Christ and culture, between the Church and the civil order, is never so clear and unambiguous as the sectarians assume. The common grace of Christ is operative in the world’s political and economic systems, even where his power is not known or named. The reality of sin infects the redeemed every bit as much as it does those outside the community of faith. Part of the appeal of the Christ-Against-Culture position is its logical neatness . It does cut through a lot of the ambiguities and complexities of life, and in a time like ours that is very appealing. Yet we in the Reformed community still need to insist that life in society is rarely neat and clear. Even our most selfless acts of obedience are tainted with self-serving. [That is why the Christ-Against-Culture position so easily slips into a Christ-Of-Culture form. One aspect of culture (in this case, counter-culture) is identified solely with the work of Christ.] No one acts in a messy world with clean hands, least of all those who are convinced they can. Further, we in the Reformed tradition need to take seriously the sectarian’s call for the renewal of the church as a confessing community, yet without falling into Utopian illusions about the Church. The Church is, and always will be, an “earthen vessel.” Attempts to form disciplined communities of the “elect” al-

    Page 61

    ways fall prey to pride. The Church is not only a visible sign of God’s reconcilia­ tion. It is also the “mother of the faithful” (Calvin) and “a hospital for sinners” (Augustine). Finally, we need to engage in a serious dialogue with the sectarian tradition on the issue of the use and abuse of power in the Church and by the Church. The creation of prophetic communities who live by counter-cultural standards can be a highly effective political act, or it can be an excuse for passivity, for quietism. Refusal to use the power entrusted to the Church can be every bit as unfaithful as using it wrongly. The moral ambiguity involved in the use of all power is no reason for inaction on the part of the Church. The Church, like its members, is justified finally not by the perfection of its actions or the purity of its motives, but by the grace of God. Confidence in His grace can enable us to act in light of our best understanding of God’s just and loving purposes in history without falling into the fanaticism of those who must always be ‘right’ or the despair of those who know they are never wholly right. Reinhold Niebuhr has put it best:

    Justification by faith in the realm of justice means that we will not reward the pressures and counter pressures, the tensions, the overt and the covert conflicts by which justice is achieved and maintained, as normative in the absolute sense; but neither will we ease our conscience by seeking to escape from involvement in them. We will know that we cannot purge ourselves of the sin and guilt in which we are involved by the moral ambiguities of politics without also disavowing responsibility for the creative possibilities of justice. (Nature and Destiny, Vol. Π, p. 284)

    In seeking to focus this issue of the relationship between the Church and the civil order in terms of one’s preaching ministry, it would be well to study I Samuel 8-12. In those chapters two radically different traditions are allowed to stand side by side. One tradition sees the development of centralized govern­ ment, represented by the king, as an act of apostasy against God. The other tradition sees the kingship as a gift of God for the well-being of his people. Both affirmations need to be made. The civil order exists by the grace of God for just and orderly social life, yet such order can easily become an idol, usurping the central loyalty that belongs to God alone. At times God’s people are called to affirm the importance of social institutions as one of the ways in which the common grace of God is present among us. At other times the people of God must voice their No and break with the idolatries of culture. I am increasingly convinced that we are in the early stages of such a time when our No will have to be uttered clearly. And yet even in so doing, we cannot retreat into our own private communities of faith. We cannot sit around reassuring one another of our “OKness.” We must risk striving for whatever wider expressions of justice and mercy are possible in our society. We must seek to develop a style of life that is both critical and affirmative, both prophetic and pastoral. We must express radically God’s judgment on all structures, systems, and institutions that oppress the weak and poor and that violate God’s intention for human wholeness. But at the same time we must affirm and cherish those structures, systems, and institutions that by the grace of God do help to make and to keep human life human and humane, even in an apocalyptic time like ours. And that is a task that will require our fullest gifts and labors throughout the years of our ministries.

  • Kenosis and Narcissism: Notes on the Philippian Hymn for Preaching Today

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

    Page 14

    Kenosis and Narcissism:

    Notes on the Philippian Hymn for Preaching

    Today

    Bruce L. Roberts

    First Presbyterian Church, Tallahassee, Florida

    I.

    The “kenotic motif,” for which the locus classicus is Philippians 2:5-11, offers the preacher several methodological problems that deserve careful attention . As is always the case, especially with the subtler christological points, close examination of such problems opens up surprisingly fresh and useful expository possibilities. Both pastors and congregations need to explore new regions of familiar and oft-recited doctrines; for nothing is so enervating as the tiresome elaboration of the obvious. The first problem lies in the strikingly different uses for which the work kenos (or kenoo) is employed in the New Testament and in the Septuagint. To be sure it is used in Phil. 2:7 in the sense of Christ’s self-emptying (and laying by) of the prerogatives of his divine form and mode of being. But elsewhere (Mk. 12:3, Lk. 20:10,11, Lk. 1:53) the word is used to connote “without profit,” and even “futile.” In the Septuagint we find the word used in the sense of “pointlessness,” “in vain,” or “meaningless” (Job 15:3, Jer. 6:29). Somewhat closer to the meaning in Phil. 2:7 is the spiritualized sense of the poverty implicit in discipleship, as in Matt. 5:3 ff. or Jas. 2:5. The point is that we cannot reduce the idea of the kenotic to the level of a truism or a simplism that finds consistent confirmation in the scripture. Paul’s use of it in Philippians is original , and somewhat idiosyncratic.1 The second problem flows from the first. If a kenotic christology is not specifically, categorically, and universally indicated as an early teaching except by Paul (and by him in this one passage), how are we to make use of it in preaching? The answer seems to be that the self-emptying is both a clear theological statement in the Letter to the Philippians, and an important organizing principle for christology; both substantive and methodological; worthy of attention in and of itself, and highly productive of correlative exegesis with other passages. Clearly the earliest Christian theology employed the concept of kenosis (and the pericope as a whole) in this dual manner.2 Donald Dawe associates four basic ideas with Phil. 2:5-11. They are (a) belief in the préexistence of Christ (II Cor. 8:9, Phil. 2:6, John 1:1 ff., Heb. 1:23 ; (b) belief in the reality of his human life as Jesus of Nazareth (II Cor. 8:9, Phil. 2:7-9,1 John 4:2); (c) belief in the exaltation of Christ to the status of Lord in his resurrection-ascension (II Cor. 8:9, Phil. 2:9-11, Matt. 28:18), and (c) belief in the redemption that was accomplished by Christ through his ministry of self-emptying love (II Cor. 8:9, John 17:24, Phil. 2:10).3

    Page 15

    Hans Küng relates Phil. 2:5-11 to the “undoubtedly positive attitude” of Paul to the Gospel tradition of Jesus and his reliance upon it in arguing against those who read in Paul an “abstract kerygma.”4 It is, say Dawe, Küng and others, the demonstration of Paul’s gift for taking the gospel tradition seriously and interpreting it coherently and dynamically for the Church. We may set our lenses at infinity as we approach Philippians 2:5-11, for we are dealing both with the passage that lies in the foreground, and with the ultimate pericope: salvation history. Another preliminary problem lies in the stylistic discontinuity of 2:5-11 with the rest of the Epistle. Taken as a whole, Philippians (for all its weight and worth) is not Paul’s finest literary effort. But 2:5-11 is surpassingly beautiful poetry. Some have concluded that it was an insert—a quotation from a more reflective work of Paul’s, a pre-existing fragment of his own composition or someone else’s. No attempt is made here to resolve that issue. Suffice it to say that it is congruent with the elevated style he employs elsewhere. And despite the fact that it introduces a new idea, it does not contradict his other writings. The passage is in the form of a poem or a hymn. It must, therefore, be considered with the sensitivity rightly accorded to works of aesthetic unity, not hacked apart and analyzed piecemeal. It lends itself to use with the congregation as an element of the liturgy. John Leith classifies it as a “liturgical confession” in his Creeds of the Church.5 A paraphrase of the pericope has been set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams under the title “At the Name of Jesus,” and may be found in many contemporary hymnals.6 Reginald H. Fuller calls Phil. 2:1-11 “the great christological hymn which, following ancient tradition, was read on Passion (Palm) Sunday.”7 So it may be said and sung by all at least as profitably as it may be explained or amplified through the sermon. A fourth preliminary word must be said with regard to the opening verse of the hymn (2.5). It has traditionally be translated “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (KJV; American Standard Edition). But more recent translations have rendered the verse “Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus” (RSV; NEB). Our attention is drawn to the second clause:

    i. “which was also in Christ Jesus” (traditional), or ii. “which you have in Christ Jesus” (modern).

    Reginald Fuller points out that the hymn is an ethical exhortation. It is occasioned by the tendency of the Philippian Church to individualism and contentiousness . He discusses two basic exegetical approaches to the linking of the exhortation in vs. 5 to the rest of the poem: (a) following the older translations, an exhortation to heed the example of Christ when he humbled himself to become man and to die on the cross, and (b) following the more recent translations , an encouragement to a mystical identification with Christ (the characteristic Pauline sense of “in Christ”), an approach popularized in Germany by Karl Barth. “On this interpretation,” Fuller writes, “the pattern of Christ’s life, namely the humiliation-glorification, is not a model for Christians to imitate, but a pattern into conformity with which Christians are brought by their incorporation into Christ and their life in him.”8 If we take guardedly Fuller’s term “mystical,” it would seem that the sec-

    Page 16

    ond approach is to be preferred, since Paul is elsewhere more apt to describe Christ as the source of redemptive power than as a paragon to be emulated. A hard and fast line cannot be drawn. Indeed, the imitatio christi seems to be occupying the thoughts of major biblical scholars these days, and it is certainly resurgent in homiletical practice in this country. That may be for the good; and the reader may find himself or herself preaching Philippians 2:5 in the sense of our undoubted need to “be more like Jesus.” But one who preaches in this vein will, for fifteen or twenty minutes, be moving just outside the Reformed camp, assuming there is a desire to be in the camp in the first place!

    Π.

    To what cultural situation do we bring the Philippian Hymn today? The point of view taken here is that the passage under consideration speaks to a pronounced rise in narcissism in America. It may just be that Americans are no less generous and altruistic today than they have ever been, but evidence is accumulating that suggests the growth of self-serving patterns of behavior. With the restraint that is appropriate to ama­ teur social analysts, ministers should be alert to point out the indicators of a swing in the national psyche toward a strikingly poignant malady: pathological self-preoccupation. Each of us will have her or his own list of indicators (and frameworks of interpretation), but I would venture to suggest seven: (1) Proposition 13, re­ cently enacted in California, has triggered instantaneous and affirmative re­ sponses in at least half the states in the U.S., where legislators are caucusing at this writing to get on the California band-wagon. And with scant discourage­ ment from the electorate. (2) Several successful current advertising programs openly suggest buying a significantly more expensive product than the ones offered by competitors, because the prospective buyer is “worth it.” (3) The year’s greatest publishing successes cater to the self-preoccupation market, es­ pecially the run-away bestseller Looking Out for Number One. (4) Increasing numbers of young Americans are choosing the single status, thus avoiding the emotional stresses of being and having a spouse, and the financial responsibility of children; and they give these as their reasons. (5) The proliferation of various “therapies” to enhance self-actualization continues at full tilt, and finds ready acceptance with the public for the most part. (6) The ethos of liberationism, so profoundly significant in its implications for oppressed persons and for all of society, would seem to have touched off a backlash of self-protection among the secure and the privileged. (7) Popular religion advertises, broadcasts, and pub­ lishes a message of gospel-sanctioned self-preoccupation. Such indicators may not signal anything new in the American experience, but they should prompt us to ask whether a trend is emerging, which could prove difficult to impede or to reverse because of its overpowering momentum. We have already noted that the Philippian Letter was written to a local chapter of that hardy, perennial group of Christians whose chief distinction is “to think more highly of themselves than they ought to think.” The problem in Philippi seems to have been a comparatively minor one. A few commentators

    Page 17

    have wondered why Pual used (wasted?) such a transcendently magnificent exhortation for so mundane a purpose. One recalls Reinhold Niebuhr’s dig at some preachers who “tend to hit a gnat with a meat cleaver.” Whatever may have been the case in Philippi, American self-indulgence (including that of American Christians) is not gnat-like. It is monstrous. Linda Wolfe, in an article published in the June 1978 “Psychology Today,” has called ours “an age of narcissism, recalling the beautiful youth of Greek legend, who fell in love with his reflection in a pool and pined away in rapture over it.” “Some observers,” she writes, “see the preoccupation with self and the decline of interest in public life and social goals as an evidence of a growing narcissism in the national character.”9 Despite the general familiarity of ministers, clinicians, and humanists with the Myth of Narcissus, the medical community has only recently begun to define the disorder of narcissism and to describe the syndrome for diagnostic purposes. In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association will vote on the question of according clinical status to narcissism. A draft of diagnostic criteria being prepared by the APA lists the following identifying symptoms: “A. Grandiose sense of self-importance or uniqueness, e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, focuses on how special one’s problems are. “B. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. “C. Exhibitionistic: requires constant attention and admiration. “D. Responds to criticism, indifference of others, or defeat with either cool indifference or with marked feelings of rage, inferiority, shame, humiliation, or emptiness. “E. At least two of the following are characteristic of disturbances in interpersonal relationships:

    1. Lack of empathy: inability to recognize how others feel; 2. Entitlement: expectation of special favors without assuming reciprocal responsibilities; 3. Interpersonal exploitativeness; and 4. Relationships characteristically vacillate between the extremes of over-idealization and devaluation.”10

    We could go on and on, describing the predicament with a glowing ardor of moralism, probably because we are uncomfortable with the Narcissus in ourselves . But what constructive work can a minister do in addressing such peculiar agony from the point of view of Philippians 2.:5-11?

    III.

    First, we must work with ourselves. Psychiatrist Otto Kernberg has said (and here you will need to supply “ministers” for “geniuses”), “Frequently narcissists are the ‘promising’ geniuses who never fulfill their promise, whose development ultimately proves banal.”10 It may be, preachers, that the chief weight of the exhortation will fall upon ourselves; not just because we are Christians , but because we are preachers. One gripped in the pretentiousness so often marring early pastoral careers may find here the key to authentic formation for

    Page 18

    ministry. One in mid-career, subject to the peculiar devastations of ministerial ennui, may find here the spring of revitalization. One travelling the vocational homestretch may find here the urge to give headlong expression to a long resisted prophetic impulse. We know in our hearts the dark side of kenosis: futility , vanity, and meaninglessness. But we are addressed in Phil. 2:5-11 by purposive , intentional, redemptive self-emptying. And it is not sick self-abnegation, because there is authentic glory in it, and more. The hymn speaks at the deepest level to our much-vaunted human potential—which we have, already in Christ Jesus. Second, let the pericope be pondered for the shape and contour it gives to the theology we proclaim. Perhaps it will best be “preached” by the impact it has on our handling of all the beloved texts of Advent, Epiphany, Lent, and Eastertide. Speaking personally, I do not intend to preach again on Phil. 2:5-11 until I have allowed it to inform christological and ethical sermons for at least a year. In the meantime, what is to prevent its being used as an aspect of the liturgy, so that the unspoken theological tension and correlation may be worked with by the congregation? Third, Paul is so conscious here of the majesty of the downward trajectory of God’s compassion, that he forgets to scold the Phillipians for their competitiveness and divisiveness. However unintentional this slip-up on his part, let us appropriate it as grace! We will not get very far by carping at the congregation in the pattern of liberal preaching at its worst. Or by quoting another cliche from someone else’s worthwhile but ephemeral sermon (as in the by now tiresome “let us live more simply, so that others may simply live.”) Our task is to preach the gospel as plainly as we can. Good news: somewhat in the vein of

    we sense emptiness in ourselves our misguided quest for fulfillment only reveals the vastness of the inner chasm but we are in Jesus Christ who has come down to us in order to bring us through our self-preoccupation into his mind which is to love and to share

    thus our best and most fulfilling course is to obey him and to have a part in his joy

    for the end of the story is his glory and our becoming new persons simple followers serving him serving others.

    Now it’s a risk to construct such a little “history of how I shall preach” such as this. It could be demolished polemically from any number of perspectives. But such an exercise, at very least, will help us to avoid shouting at people for being

    Page 19

    narcissists, indulging our professional penchant for sarcasm, or exacerbating our congregations’ feelings that their guilt is irremediable. Search, by whatever means, for ways to undergird their fuller incorporation into what God in Jesus Christ is doing for them, as expressed in this cardinal christological passage. (Incidentally, I really made the little sequence above quite crude and elementary , so you can have the satisfaction of improving upon it gleefully. One of us, at least, is not a narcissist!) Kierkegaard left us a strange little parable as his comment on the Philippian hymn. It concerns a monarch who wished to woo a lovely, but poor, maiden of low estate. His attempt to find a way to win her without compromising her integrity, or overwhelming her with his majesty, or causing her deep shame at what she was (for he loved her and wished to be loved by her) finally results in his laying aside the crown and assuming servant-form alongside her.12 Erich Segal should have been advised and restrained, for S.K. had already written “Love Story,” which he grounded in Paul’s poem:

    Unity cannot, as we have seen, be brought about by elevation, so it must be attempted by a descent. The God must become the equal of even the lowliest disciple. But the lowliest is one who must serve others, and the God will therefore appear in the form of a servant. But this servant’s form is not something merely put on, like the king’s beggar cloak, which, because it is only a cloak, flutters loosely, and betrays the king. It is a true form. For this is the unfathomable nature of Love, that it desires equality with the beloved; not in jest, but seriously and in truth.13

    So we go to work in crafting sermon and living life, knowing narcissism, but also limning the unfathomable nature of love.

    1 See Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Vol. Ill (Grand Rapids , Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1976) pp. 659-662. 2 Donald G. Dawe, The Form of a Servant: A Historical Analysis of the Kenotic Motif (Philadel-

    phia, Westminister Press, 1963), pp. 26-29. 3 Ibid., p. 50.

    4 Hans Kung, On Being a Christian (Garden City, Doubleday and Company, 1976), p. 403 f.

    5 John H. Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches: a Reader in Christian Doctrine from the Bible to

    the Present (Richmond, John Knox Press, 1973), p. 15. 6 See no. 143, The Hymnbook.

    7 Reginald H. Fuller, Preaching the New Lectionary: the Word of God for the Church Today

    (Collegeville, The Liturgical Press, 1976), p. 253 f. 8 R. H. Fuller, ibid.

    9 Linda Wolfe and Otto Kernberg, “Why Some People Can’t Love,” in Psychology Today, June,

    1978, p. 55. 10 Draft version, as yet unapproved, of American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Sta-

    tistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Second Edition), Section: category 301.81, Robert L. Spitzer, M.D., editorial chairman. 11 Linda Wolfe and Otto Kernberg, op. cit., p. 56.

    12 T.H. Croxall, Tr., Meditations from Kierkegaard (Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1955),

    pp. 32-35. 13 Ibid., p. 35.