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  • Blood done sign my name

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Art Ross

    White Memorial Presbyterian Church, Raleigh, North Carolina

    BLOOD DONE SIGN MY NAME: A TRUE STORY by Timothy B. Tyson. New York: Crown Publishers, 2004. 368 pages.

    Tim Tyson calls his book “ATrue Story.” The book is true, he says, from his point of view. With this excellent definition of truth, Tyson proceeds to teach his readers what it means to be a witness. To be a witness is to tell the truth, from our point of view. In this book, Tyson wrestles with truth about his own family. He wrestles with truth about his own life and the lives of people he loves, admires, and respects. As Tyson wrestles with truth, he learns to live truth. A legal witness tells the truth. A faithful witness lives the truth. When you first read the book, you might think the story is about Tim Tyson and his family as they wrestled with racism in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Tyson was a child in those years, then a teenager. His father was a Methodist pastor in three small North Carolina towns, one after another. His mother was a schoolteacher. Tyson’s father was a witness to the gospel in a time and place when racism appeared to win. Tyson’s mother was a witness as well. However, when we read more deeply, we discover that the book is about human beings wrestling with God and wrestling with themselves, wrestling to be faithful to the gospel, to the churches they served and the communities in which they lived, and the family of which they were a part. “Stories can have sharp edges,” writes Tyson (323). “If you don’t believe it,” he says, “read the Bible.” An Old Testament passage Tyson shares in one of his stories has sharp edges. Esau was favorite son of his father; Jacob was the favorite son of his mother. Sharp edges. Jacob cheated Esau and had to flee for his life. Laban cheated Jacob, and Jacob outsmarted Laban. Jacob left Laban, taking with him Laban’s only daughters and the grandchildren. Sharp edges. On his journey home, Jacob wrestled with God. When the wrestling was over, Jacob had a limp and Jacob had received a blessing. Jacob became a blessing. As you read this book, you recognize that, like Jacob, Tim Tyson has also received a limp and a blessing. Tyson does not have a physical limp; he walks without a problem. Tyson’s limp comes as he both loves his family and knows his family’s history. He admires his parents as much as anyone you will ever meet does, and they clearly love him. Tyson has called this book, “a love letter to my Dad.” However, Tyson’s family history, like many family histories, like Jacob and Esau’s family history, is filled with stories that have sharp edges, stories of people who know the blessing of God, but who take advantage of other people, or look down upon others. When we take advantage of another person, or look down upon another person, we end up with a limp. Tyson’s family causes him to limp, but his family has been and continues to be a blessing. Tyson’s parents kept diaries and journals throughout their adult lives. They have shared these memoirs with their son, who quotes freely from them. As you read the

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    book, you will wonder if Tyson or his family will ever be able to attend another family gathering! Blood Done Sign My Name tells the story of a racially motivated murder in Oxford, North Carolina, in 1970, a murder committed by the father of a friend of Tyson’s, at the time when Tyson and the friend were ten years old. The book documents the investigation and trial that followed the murder and the injustice that occurred when the murderer was set free. The book tells those things in a powerful, well-documented way. However, this book is much more than just another story about the painful struggle for racial justice in a Southern state or our nation. This book is about a boy named Tim Tyson who becomes a man – a boy who becomes a man as he wrestles to know truth, speak truth, and to live truth. Tyson’s story of becoming a witness includes a tale about Miss Amy. In 1964, Miss Amy was about sixty years old, and Tyson was about five. His father had invited a black educator, the president of North Carolina A & Τ College, to speak at the church he served. Lay leaders in the congregation were furious. Tyson’s father refused to withdraw the invitation. The night before Dr. Proctor was scheduled to preach, the leaders met to demand the invitation be withdrawn. Lots of wrestling was going on, until Miss Amy spoke. Miss Amy walked with a limp, a physical limp. She had been first grade teacher for many of those who came to the meeting. People had accused Tyson’s father of tearing the church apart. Miss Amy spoke: “If there is going to be any tearing done, we are going to do the tearing apart ourselves.” Then she hobbled to the front of the room, looked at the people gathered there and said,

    There was a case up near Chapel Hill recently where a teenage boy went around a curve too fast and was killed in a car crash. So they thought. He was down there by the side of the road; they were waiting for an ambulance to come and take him to the funeral home. There wasn’t any sign of life. But then an airman from Pope Air Force Base stopped by;… he saw the boy lying down there and he scrambled down the embankment and opened that boy’s mouth. He saw the boy’s tongue stuck back in his throat and he ran his finger back there and pulled out the tongue, and then he gave that boy mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. By the time the ambulance got there, the boy was walking around alive as you and me. Now, what I haven’t told you is that boy who had the wreck was white, and that airman that saved him was black. But that’s the truth, and I want all of you fathers to tell me something. (77-78)

    She looked searchingly around the room. “Now, which one of you fathers would have said to the airman, ‘Now don’t you run your black fingers down my boy’s white throat?’ Don’t you put your black lips on my boy’s mouth?’” The wrestling was over. Miss Amy limped back to her seat. Her story has sharp edges to this day, sharp edges like a surgeon’s scalpel. The sharp edge of a scalpel can hurt – and it can heal. Tyson’s stories help the reader grasp the way a witness is like a surgeon, and the way truth is like a scalpel. When the truth of memory of sin forces us to limp, we pray. We confess our sins before God. When

    Easter 2006

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    the reality of God’s forgiving grace becomes our blessing, we rejoice. As we confess our limp and rejoice in our blessing, the stories we tell and the life we live become our witness. For any preacher who seeks also to be a witness, the book is a joy. The stories that Tyson tells will preach. However, the reason to read this book is to know the people Tyson portrays. The true stories he shares abouthis life, his parents’ lives, and the lives of many other people impacted by racial struggle make this book a witness and a joy.

  • From preachers to suffragists: woman’s rights and religious conviction in the lives of three nineteenth-century American clergywomen

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Elizabeth McGregor Simmons

    University Presbyterian Church, San Antonio, Texas

    FROM PREACHERS TO SUFFRAGISTS: WOMAN’S RIGHTS AND RELI-

    GIOUS CONVICTION IN THE LIVES OF THREE NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICAN CLERGYWOMEN by Beverly Zink-Sawyer. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2003. 246 pages.

    I hope every preacher reading this review has a group of clergy friends like the women of the Preaching Roundtable. Once a year, we converge from our far-flung places of ministry for a gathering that is one-half biblical/theological/homiletic discussion and one-half feminist slumber party! Sometimes one of us can’t make it because of the impending birth of her baby; in another year, it is the planning of a daughter’s wedding that outranks the Roundtable on the preacher’s to-do list. But amid the comings and goings of our busy pastoral lives, we have found it a fabulous thing to be a part of such a community, keeping in touch as best we can, praying for one another and cheering each other on when a baby is born or a daughter is wed, or a marathon race is completed or a sabbatical proposal is approved, or, yes, yet another Sunday sermon in Ordinary Time is preached. It was through this community of amazing clergy women that I became acquainted with three amazing clergywomen of the nineteenth century. Dean of Students and Preaching Roundtable member Edna Banes invited us to Union Theological Seminary /Presbyterian School of Christian Education for our 2005 gathering. While we were on campus, Professor Beverly Zink-Sawyer joined us for some conversation about preachers/suffragists Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Olympia Brown, and Anna Howard Shaw. In From Preachers to Suffragists, Zink-Sawyer shares more fully and analyzes in an engaging manner the stories of these three women who, in her words, “demonstrate how.. .two belief systems—belief in the equality of women and belief in traditional Christian doctrine—that were often portrayed as conflicting could be held together and employed for social change.” Antoinette Brown Blackwell ( 1825-1921 ) was one of the first women to complete the course of study at Oberlin College and the first woman to be ordained by a recognized Protestant denomination in the United States. Zink-Sawyer recounts the details of the opposition Brown Blackwell faced as she strove to fulfill her calling, including the mean-spirited assignment she received from one professor to prepare an essay on the New Testament passages commanding women’s silence in church. The unhappy event proved to be beneficial to Brown Blackwell, however. She devoted her best efforts to the task, becoming a skilled biblical exegete through her engagement in the process, eventually revising that very essay to present “a logical argument on woman’s position in the Bible, claiming her complete equality with man, the simultaneous creation of the sexes, and their moral responsibilities as individual and imperati ve” at the First National Woman’s Rights Convention in 1850. It was to the influence of Antoinette Brown Blackwell that Olympia Brown ( 18351926 ) traced her call to ordained ministry. Olympia Brown was a student at Antioch

    Journal for Preachers

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    College, and when several of her fellow students and she became frustrated that all guest lecturers brought to campus were men, these feisty young women raised private funds to secure Antoinette Brown Blackwell to lecture on a Saturday night and preach in a local church on Sunday morning. Olympia Brown later recalled, “It was the first time I had heard a woman preach, and the sense of victory lifted me up. I felt as though the Kingdom of Heaven were at hand.” Olympia Brown would go on to spend many years in parish ministry before making the momentous decision at age fifty-three to trade one field of ministry, her Universalist church in Racine, Wisconsin, for the larger parish of working for woman suffrage across the country while continuing to pastor smaller Wisconsin parishes on a part-time basis. She would experience the fruits of her labor when, at the age of eighty-five, she cast her first vote in a presidential election. Beverly Zink-Sawyer’s recounting of Anna Howard Shaw’s (1847-1919) story struck a particular chord with me. It was heartening and empowering for a parish pastor of twenty-six years to read how Shaw rode the waves of conflict and peace in her Massachusetts Methodist Protestant congregation with competence, courage, and good humor. On one occasion, her congregation divided into two warring factions. In her autobiography, Shaw describes how each side resolutely refused to put their respective criticisms in writing (“apparently the first time they had ever agreed on any point”) and devised an original method of presenting their complaints—voicing them aloud in public prayer. The combination of energy, intelligence, imagination, and love Anna Howard Shaw employed in meeting this challenge makes for rejuvenating reading for any twenty-first century pastor who has “been there” (and haven’t we all?). In reading Beverly Zink-Sawyer’s volume, I feel as if I have made three great friends for life in Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Olympia Brown, and Anna Howard Shaw. Zink-Sawyer compellingly presents not only their personal stories as pastors and social activists, but a sense of the Spirit which was in them, described by Brown Blackwell as “above me, and within me, and all around me…not the combined powers of earth and hell could have tempted me to do otherwise than to stand firm.” Through Zink-Sawyer’s fine efforts, readers are blessed to draw up their chairs and be seated at a Preaching Roundtable with three forebears whose Spirit-infused courage serves to fuel our own.

    Pentecost 2006

  • A tale of two scrolls

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    A Tale of Two Scrolls1

    Justo L. González

    Decatur, Georgia

    It was forty-seven years ago, in another century and another land, that I sat where this year’s graduates now sit. As I debated about what to say this evening, and thought back to my own seminary graduation trying to find something that might be particularly relevant to today’s graduates, I was deeply humbled by the realization that I remember little of the speech in my own graduation. (At that time, we had only one graduation ceremony, combined with a baccalaureate service.) I do not even remember who the speaker was ! What I most remember is that there on a table sat a small pile of diplomas, and that I spent most of the speech wondering when the speaker would sit down, so that we could get on with the business of receiving our degrees. Time was not moving, and the commencement speaker seemed terribly long-winded. I remember passing the time counting heads and counting diplomas, trying to figure out which of those little scrolls with ribbons tied around them would actually be mine. As I reflect on that experience, I remember another biblical figure who also received a little scroll—as you, too, will receive tomorrow. It is from the book of Revelation, chapter 10. Allow me to read a few verses:

    And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He held a little scroll open in his hand. Setting his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land,… Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll; and he said to me, “Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.” So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter. Then they said to me, “You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.”

    Clearly, this passage is patterned after Ezekiel 2 and 3, where the prophet is given a scroll to eat. But before we turn to that text, we must look at John’s vision of the little scroll in the context of the book of Revelation itself. This is a “little scroll.” And it is open. It is not the great scroll with the seven seals, which only the victorious Lamb could open. Furthermore, it is held in the hand of an angel. It is not like the great scroll with the seven seals, which is held by the right hand of the One who sits on the throne, and passed directly from the Almighty God to the Almighty Lamb. Presumably, this little scroll does not contain the entire mystery of the ages, as the larger scroll does. It is much more modest than that. It is the word given to John to proclaim to the churches. In order to proclaim God’s message to the churches, John does not need to digest the entire scroll with the seven seals. What John is to proclaim is much humbler than any such grandiose vision. What he is to proclaim is the word that he has digested and assimilated in this little scroll

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    Here the role of the prophet/evangelist/pastor/priest is put in its proper context. It is a very important role. So important, that a mighty angel brings it. But the prophet does not get to eat the great scroll with the seven seals. And, let it be said in passing, the same is true of all of us. The parchments you will receive tomorrow represent much work and knowledge. They even represent your calling and commitment to a task so great that it is as if a mighty angel had brought it from heaven. But the knowledge represented in these little scrolls is as nothing compared with the majesty and the mystery of the great scroll of God’s wisdom and God’s grace. Remember that, for there are two things that are absolutely necessary to be a good pastor, a good theologian, or a good lay Christian: First, you must take your calling with earnest seriousness, as if it had been handed to you by a mighty angel from heaven. Second, you must keep a sense of humor about yourself, remembering that all the knowledge and all the wisdom represented in those little scrolls, and all the knowledge and all the wisdom you might accumulate throughout your life, fall ridiculously short of God’s great truth. For only the Lamb that was slain is worthy to open the great scroll with the seven seals. Remember that! If we now compare the passage in Revelation with its literary background in Ezekiel 2 and 3, the parallelisms are obvious. There is no need to dwell on them. What is more striking, however, are two significant differences. The first is that, while Ezekiel says, “I ate it, and in my mouth it was as sweet as honey,” John says: “it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.” Ezekiel speaks of a sweet word of God. For John, the word he is to proclaim is bittersweet. The second difference has to do with the scope of the message of each of the two prophets. Ezekiel is told: “Mortal, go to the house of Israel and speak my very words to them. For you are not sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language, but to the house of Israel—not to many peoples of obscure speech and difficult language, whose words you cannot understand.” In contrast, the mighty angel tells John: “You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.” There is a connection between the two particular traits in John’s vision vis-à-vis Ezekiel’s: the bitterness in the stomach and the wide scope of the message. If any writer of the New Testament was a Jew, and steeped in his own culture and traditions, that was John of Patmos. It has been pointed out that there is hardly a verse in his book that does not have an allusion to the Hebrew Scriptures. His Greek is full of Semitisms, perhaps due in part to his greater familiarity with Hebrew and with Aramaic, and perhaps as a result of his constant literary dependence on the Hebrew Bible. And he quotes that Bible, not from the Septuagint that all the other New Testament authors employed, but either from an unknown translation or from his own, which he does as he goes along. He is well aware of the mission given to the prophet Ezekiel when he ate his scroll: Ezekiel was to speak only to the house of Israel, and they would not believe him. Now he, John, is not told to whom he is to speak, but about whom. The difference between Ezekiel’s vision and John’s is not that Ezekiel is to go to Israel, to a people who understand his language, and John is to go throughout the world, to many peoples and nations and languages and kings. The difference is rather that John is to go back to his audience, presumably the seven churches and other similar communities in Asia, and

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    speak to them about the many peoples, and nations, and languages, and kings. And that is why the word of God, the little scroll that will be John’s message, although sweet to the taste, is hard to stomach. John the Jew, John who can quote the Hebrew Scriptures back and forth, apparently without even bothering to think about it, is given a message to proclaim to his congregations. His congregations are probably also mostly Jewish. Otherwise, they would hardly be able to understand this book he is writing to them, so full of allusions to the Hebrew Scriptures, and even to more recent Jewish traditions. And now he is told that he is to speak to these congregations, not just the word they expect, that those who are faithful until death will receive the crown of life, or that everyone who conquers will receive some of the hidden manna, and a white stone with a secret name, but he is to speak to them about “many peoples, and nations, and languages, and kings.” He is to speak to them, not only about how important it is that they be faithful in the impending tribulations and persecution, but also about “saints from every tribe and language and people and nation,” whom the Lamb has made “to be a kingdom and priests serving God, and who will reign on earth.” And that is bitter to his good Jewish stomach, as it is bitter to the stomach of any of us who are deeply steeped in our own cultural traditions. All of this serves to remind us that, while the encounter of many peoples and cultures is intellectually and emotionally enriching, there are those who resent it. As the old certainties provided by a fairly parochial worldview are challenged by people coming out of different experiences, many respond in fear and bitterness—actually, we all do in one measure or another. They did in Jerusalem as they tried to get rid of a troublesome Galilean and his Galilean followers. They did in the Middle Ages, when Greeks and Latins decided they would rather have nothing to do with each other. And they do even today, when people arm themselves and perpetrate acts of terrorism in defense of racial purity and supposedly Christian values. I submit to you that this will be one of the most difficult aspects of Christian ministry in this country in the century that has just begun. We are living in an unprecedented time in Christian history, when a faith that for centuries has been centered in the North-Atlantic has finally become a worldwide faith; a time when the growth of the church in far away places is nothing short of astounding: a time when the United Methodist Church in the tiny African nation of Ivory Coast is larger than the United Methodist Church in this great state of Georgia; when there are more Presbyterians in Korea than in the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.; a time when we can rejoice in the sweetness of God’s bringing to fruition the work and the sacrifice of missionary efforts of generations. And yet, it will be difficult to proclaim this reality in our own churches. It will be difficult, because many will prefer a supposed gospel that does not challenge our exclusivisms and our tribalisms. People will resent the existence of a worldwide church of which we are no longer the center. People will resent that what they used to claim as the “faith of our fathers, holy faith” has been taken over by others with whom they have no common ancestry. People will resent having to look to Africa or to Asia for a clearer vision of what it means to be a Christian today. And yet, faithfulness requires that we continually put forth the vision of John, of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne of the Lamb.”

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    It will not be easy. As cultural and racial tensions grow in the land, as some take it upon themselves to eliminate the tension by eliminating others, we shall more than ever need a church where people hear, not only about God’s love for them, but also about the many tribes, and nations, and languages, whom God also loves. Tomorrow you will receive a scroll that certifies your studies. It will come from the president and the dean (who may not look like mighty angels!). But it comes also from the same God who called you, and who invites you to take, together with the diploma that certifies your studies, also the little scroll that goes with your calling, to savor its sweetness and, even though it may be a bitter task, to go and tell this divided world, to go to this society of racial supremacies, to tell your own tribe and nation, to tell your own denomination, to tell them about the many tribes, and peoples, and languages, and nations whom God is calling and bringing together, as John of Patmos would say, to be a kingdom serving the Lord, until the day of the vision glorious, when a great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, will jointly cry out in a loud voice saying: “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb.” And to the One who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb who was slain, and to the Holy Spirit of God, al Dios solo trino, nuestro Salvador, sea todo honor y gloria, forever and ever. Amén.

    Note

    1. A sermon preached at the Baccalaureate service of Columbia Theological Seminary, celebrated in Columbia Presbyterian Church, Decatur, Georgia, May 15,2004. Some of the material in this sermon has been published previously by the author in his book, For the Healing of the Nations: The Book of Revelation in an Age of Cultural Conflict (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999).

  • Jeremiah as ideal survivor

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    Jeremiah as Ideal Survivor

    Kathleen M. O’Connor

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    Recently after receiving news of the dire illness of a most beloved family member, I began to imagine within myself the presence of a jar of water, a bottle of tears filled to the brim. I did not look for this image, it just showed up, and then one day when I was taking a walk, it moved. Involuntarily, I imagined myself offering it to God, holding up the jar to unseen mystery, not for a reprieve, not for anything but as an act of worship, somehow being absorbed into the “fountain of living waters.” Maybe that image arose from thinking the day before about the “fountain of living waters” (Jer 2:13; John 4:10) or from watching a friend collect jars to preserve late summer tomatoes. Wherever it came from, that brief inner experience has both surprised and steadied me, and for the moment, at least, opened my spirit to what will come. In my imagination, it joined me and my family to the Paschal mystery, though I can hardly explain it. I think the telling of Jeremiah’s life in that big, complicated book named after him, worked in a similar, steadying way for its early readers who lived in the midst of disaster. A disaster is much more than sad or tragic events. It is a situation of collapse where people lack the necessary material or spiritual resources to get on with their lives.1 In the sixth century B. C. E., the Judean people survived three Babylonian invasions, had their land occupied by the invaders, and some were deported. They lost loved ones, routines of daily life, government structures. The ancient covenant traditions that connected them with God were broken to pieces. God who dwelled with them on Mount Zion had turned against them. The effects of brute violence and destruction upon individuals and communities are to destroy speech, to isolate people in their traumatic state, to leave them overloaded with pain in mute despair. The book of Jeremiah is utterly preoccupied with the disaster; every poem, story, or sermon anticipates or addresses it in some way. In the process, it creates poetic and symbolic language to help traumatized survivors speak of their suffering and to begin to interpret it, cope with it, and to endure through it until that new day when life might again appear among them. One way it does this is by telling Jeremiah’s life as the story of the “ideal survivor.” Of course, Hosea talks of his marriage and family (Hos 1), and the book of Isaiah presents episodes about his life (Isa 7:1-25; 37-39), but the book of Jeremiah does more. It relates events of the prophet’s life from birth to his disappearance in Egypt at the end of his ministry.

    Double Vision By telling Jeremiah’s life, the book puts forward a flesh and blood figure with whom readers can identify.2 His struggles render visible and human their own sorrow, anger, and contradictions, and in doing so, his life summons them to come to grips with their reality. Of course, things are not simple because Jeremiah is more than a mere survivor of disaster. He is also a prophet whose suffering is largely caused by the very people whose lives he embodies. But as a rich symbolic figure, his life straddles two opposing hermeneutical directions. To interpret his stories requires a kind of double vision not to blur his prophetic identity but to expand its meanings. On one level,

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    Jeremiah is separate from the community. His suffering is unique to his role as a prophet who stands against and indicts his own people.3 On another level, he embodies their fate and the ethical behavior they need for survival.4 The telling of Jeremiah’s life evokes lives of survivors, and although his suffering comes from the community ‘ s resistance to God’s word, the shapes and patterns ofthat suffering match theirs.

    Jeremiah’s Bodily Deprivations and Pain Even as a courageous and persistent prophet, Jeremiah is not a hero of epic proportions. He is an anguished figure, a kind of anti-hero, wounded, isolated, and broken like the community in the grip of disaster. His celibacy, for example, makes personal the fate of the nation that has seen in war and occupation the disruption of ordinary domestic life result from war and occupation. Jeremiah both prophesies and lives that disrupted existence when God will banish the “voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of bridegroom or the voice of the bride” (16:9). God forbids him to take a wife or beget children because the children of Judah will die of disease, perish by sword and famine, and their bodies will become food for birds and animals (16:1 -4). Children and ordinary life have already perished among the book’s readers. Jeremiah suffers in his body what the community suffers in the long course of the national disaster. Enemies capture him multiple times (20:1-6; 26:1-24; 37:11-21; 38:1-6), attack him (11:18-19, 21-23; 20:1-6; 26:1-24), and forcefully exile him to Egypt (chaps 42-44). The first story of his captivity ironically occurs in the Temple where the High Priest Pashur strikes him, imprisons him in the stocks, and then releases him (20:1-6). Jeremiah uses this occasion to announce the captivity and exile of the priest and his friends, explicitly joining his experience with theirs even though the two have different causes. His next captivity a mob threatens his life and puts him on trial for preaching the Temple Sermon (26:1-24; cf., 7:1-15). In this episode, the prophet acknowledges his captivity with seeming equanimity. “But as for me, here I am in your hands, do with me as seems right to you,” (26:14). He warns his enemies that if they put him to death, they will bring a curse upon themselves. In this precarious situation, he models quiet acceptance of captivity and then inexplicably escapes with his life (26:24). Jeremiah survives all of his captivities. Two take place while the Babylonians are attacking Jerusalem. During the siege, King Zedekiah imprisons Jeremiah. Officials beat him, starve him, and threaten his existence (chaps 37-38). In the second of the two stories, officials let him down by ropes into an empty cistern to die (38:4-6). There he sinks in the mud, to the lowest point of hopelessness, the place of death and abandonment. This particular moment of Jeremiah’s suffering at the hands of his own people parallels the people’s fate at the hands of the Babylonians. They too are deprived of food, held captive, and mired in the mud of death and abandonment. With help from unlikely people, however, Jeremiah surprisingly survives both episodes. In the first case, the king orders Jeremiah’s captors to feed him, and in the second, the African servant Ebed-melek takes the initiative to rescue by lifting him up from the pit. These survival stories and most of the book, with a few exceptions, (e.g., chaps 30-33) promise readers very little. A repeated refrain across the latter part of the book offers the meager possibility that some will gain their “lives as the booty of war” (21:9; 38:2; 39:18; 45:5). To win your life as the booty of war means that your life is all you have. You are a survivor, no more and no less. To recognize this reality offers survivors the

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    basic ingredient necessary for rebuilding their life together, knowledge of their true condition. Interpreters frequently puzzle over the absence of information about Jeremiah’s death, but the book’s silence leaves his life story open-ended, filled with possibility for the unknown future. Jeremiah’s survival is of the greatest import for the people. He must survive and endure in exile, for so must they, even up to seventy years for those who are in Babylon (29:10). Jeremiah’s endurance in bleak captivity parallels that reality. Stories of Jeremiah’s captivity and survival (26:24; 36:19; 37:21 ; 38:7-12; see also 40:1-6) powerfully enact experiences of the book’s readers, and they promote hope that Jeremiah’s survival will be repeated in their own lives on some future day.

    Jeremiah’s Laments and Communal Suffering Jeremiah’s “confessions” (11:8-12:6; 15:10-21; 17:14-18; 18:18-23; 20:7-14) express the painful spiritual quandaries of survivors. The title, “weeping prophet,” fits Jeremiah not only because he urges readers to “weep and wail” (9:10) and calls for the mourning women to help the effort (9:17-22), but also because he weeps and wails himself. His prayers use disconcerting first-person language characteristic of lament psalms. That means these are liturgical pieces, suited for public performance, available for communal prayer and specifically suited to survivors of trauma and disaster. But the first person speech of the confessions does more than mark the genre. It establishes Jeremiah as one who suffers like the community. It crystallizes in one anguished voice experiences of grief that lie dormant or denied among survivors. It portrays Jeremiah’s inner life as a world of loss, betrayal, and the collapse of meaning, even as it also depicts a life of burning fidelity. Jeremiah’s confessions set before God his complaints about mortal threats against him. He names himself victim of violence, “like a lamb led to the slaughter,” schemed against, attacked by enemies who want to “cut him off from the land of the living,” and betrayed by members of his own family (11:18-19,21; 12:6). His troubled relationship with God shows tormenting doubt that echoes the community’s loss of confidence in divine justice. He accuses God of violently overpowering him, betraying him, and leaving him to his suffering (20:7). He calls God “a deceitful brook, like waters that fail” ( 15:18). He begs God to heal and save him (17:14) and to give him justice against his enemies (18:19-21). He wants his persecutors to be shamed, dismayed, and destroyed “with double destruction” (18:18). He longs for God’s “retribution upon them” (20:12). The turbulence of this inner life functions publicly to embrace the doubts, fear, and rage of the community. When God responds with words of assurance to the first two confessions, the assurance expands to embrace the needs of the community (12:5-6 and 15:19-21). “If you have raced with foot-runners and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses?” Things will get worse between the “safe land” and “the thickets of Jordan” (12:5). Jeremiah must endure through accelerating hard times ahead. Curiously, God calls Jeremiah to repent, though of what he should repent is not clear. “If you turn back and then I will take you back and you will stand before me” (15:1920 ). Whatever these words mean for Jeremiah, they raise to the attention of the surviving community a major theme of the book, the call to “return.” “Return, O faithless children, and I will bring you to Zion” (3:6-4:4). At the end of his life story, all Jeremiah has gained is his life, but his behavior offers

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    language of new social definition.5 He is the ideal wounded survivor, the personal embodiment of the fate of his people and their possible future. His life provides them with a visible representation of their experience. His life comforts because it expresses “the abyss” into which the people have been flung.6 It signals to them that they are neither alone nor isolated in their suffering. It creates a language with which they can begin to speak of their own trauma. His prayers show them how to live with God in the midst of their anger, loss, and sense of betrayal.

    Virtues For Survivors As the ideal survivor, Jeremiah exemplifies behaviors and attitudes the community must practice to reconstitute itself as God’s covenanted people. These virtues give them an orientation toward God and the world that pushes them into the process of restoration and healing.

    Jeremiah’s Engagement with God Jeremiah abides for his entire life in God’s presence in the midst of fury, betrayal, and bereavement. Jeremiah and God were connected from “before the womb” (1:5). In the Hebrew idiom of intimacy, God “knew” him and appointed him before he was born. From the beginning, Jeremiah wants to avoid suffering and tries to refuse his calling. “Ah, Lord God, truly I do not know how to speak for I am only a boy” (1:6). Although his mission is to announce the disaster to come and although he will suffer for it, God is with him to deliver him (1:8). The encouraging assurance that God will make him “a fortified city, an iron pillar, and a bronze wall” (1:18), often thought to refer only to the prophet, has resonances for an occupied people. Even as nations fight against them, YHWH is with them. Jeremiah engages with God at every turn, and most evidently in the confessions (11:18-12:6; 15:10-21; 17:14-18; 18:18-23; 20:7-14). Despite attacks on his life (11:18, 21-23; 12:6; 20:10), his isolation from others (15:17), his sense of abandonment by his community, and, above all, by God (12:1; 15:18; 20:7), he stubbornly keeps the conversation open. Both his confessions and his call portray him as a mystic, a contemplative, one utterly united with God, one who knows God, communes with God, and argues with God. God seduces, rapes, and bullies him (20:7-13), yet Jeremiah stays in conversation no matter what. More than anything else, the confessions are about that continuing connection. In passionate wrestling and searing truth-telling, Jeremiah clings to God. Of course, this intimate relationship is the fiery source of his unique role as prophet. His loyalty in the thick of devastation stands as a counterpoint to the behavior of the community whom he accuses of abandoning YHWH for other gods (chaps 1-20, especially 2:1-4:2). Yet for those who read Jeremiah’ story with double vision, his life becomes iconic, emblematic, a model of how readers should live into and through the disaster around them. His life encourages them to live as wounded, enraged contemplatives, engaged with God at every turn, even while his fragile life seems about to end, and even as God has abandoned him and them. Jeremiah’s struggles with God are an expression of his loyalty.

    Trust Jeremiah’s scuffles with God in the cauldron of his suffering summon Judean

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    survivors to recall their pre-disaster identity when they knew they were God’s chosen. Their trust is broken because the God who promised to dwell with them in Zion appears to have utterly abandoned them. Yet God is with Jeremiah, and he with God in painful wrangling and dramatic arguments. Like Jeremiah, the survivors should be utterly and completely given over to God. This is their only hope, their only security, and the only way forward. In his last confession, Jeremiah finally proclaims trust in God: “The Lord is with me like a dread warrior, therefore my persecutors will stumble and they will not prevail” (20:11). If the people cling to God with the tenacity and daring of the prophet, then their relationship with God will be rekindled and they will be reconstituted as a community of God’s covenanted people.

    Resistance Because his loyalty to God undermines and overrides any other loyalty, Jeremiah resists the political power of his nation’s rulers, monarchical (37-38) and religious (2728 ). And because his loyalty to God shapes his understanding of political and international relations, he sides with enemy Babylon and urges survivors to do the same. In his letter to the exiles, he pleads with them to accept their exile, to cooperate with their captors, and to live with them in peace for the long haul. Build houses, take wives from the Babylonians, seek the shalom of the city (29:7). For the Judean community to survive into the future, the people must accept their condition, cope with it, and find life in it. Jeremiah’s courage to resist spurious patriotism and false nationalism comes from his loyalty to YHWH who alone governs the nations. He has courage to oppose kings, government officials, other prophets, priest, elders, and any human leader who stands against God’s plans. For most of Judean officialdom, Jeremiah was a traitor, a heretic, and great disturber of the peace (see 29:24-32). Every effort was made to silence him, from burning his prophetic scroll (Jer 36) to imprisoning and attacking him (Jer 20: Ι­ ό; 38-38). Yet he objects vehemently to all political and international relationships that identify God’s cause exclusively with his nation’s well-being. His political stance is pro-Babylonian propaganda, but for survivors it is a wise, theologically grounded position to keep them alive under the heel of an overwhelming empire.

    Spirit of Cooperation Jeremiah survives because others help him. The stories about his captivity and survival exhibit a spirit of cooperation, or at least, show Jeremiah benefiting from interventions by others from inside and outside the community, from officials and foreigners. He is the spokesman for a community of resisters and a party of proBablyonian Judeans. Ahikam, son of Shaphan, mysteriously rescues him after his trial (26:24). King Jehoiakim’s officials save Baruch and Jeremiah from the king’s wrath by counseling them to hide before Jeremiah’s scroll is read to the king (36:11-19). Ebed-melech, the Ethiopian slave of the king, rescues Jeremiah from the cistern (36:713 ; 39:11-18). Implicit in these stories is a call for a spirit of openness and a willingness to find God’s rescuing work in cooperation with others. Like Jeremiah, exilic survivors must also seek alliances with others, for Babylon’s shalom is their shalom (29:7). Ultimately, of course, it is God who “rescues the needy,” God who is the “dread warrior” who prevails against enemies (20:11-13). Absolute loyalty to God remains

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    the central virtue for survivors. “When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me.. .and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you…. I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile,” so the letter to the exiles urges (29:13-14). The book of Jeremiah creates a “persona,” an impressionistically told literary account of a life that transcends itself in meaning and power. The prophet’s life is like a bottle of tears and a testimony to brokenness. It is also an angry cry for divine justice and a symbol of survival. As a fellow survivor, he negotiates the shoals of attack, occupation, and exile. In the midst of chaos, he weeps, rages, and doubts God’s fidelity and just governance of the world. He is the ideal survivor whose life embodies God’s word for his devastated people. Perhaps these strange stories about a suffering prophet surprised and steadied the book’s readers in their immense sorrow and confusion. Perhaps stories of Jeremiah’s endurance gave them energy to endure, opened them to the future, and revealed a way forward in their life together with God. In our treacherous, deceitful times, the telling of Jeremiah’s life challenges us to live contemplative lives, to root our politics in loyalty to God above nation or any other human group, and to open our hearts and minds to peoples living in disasters of our making and otherwise.

    Notes

    1. Daniel Smith-Christopher, A Biblical Theology of Exile, Overtures to Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). 2. See Walter Brueggemann, Λ Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile & Homecoming (Grand Rapids: William. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 11-12. 3. Terence E. Fretheim, “Caught in the Middle: Jeremiah’s Vocational Crisis,” Word & World4/22 (Fall 2002): 351-60. 4. See Heinz Kremers, “Ledensgemeinschaft mit Gott im Alten Testament,” EvT 13 (1953 122-40). This old article in German speaks about the importance of Jeremiah’s suffering, though it has unfortunate Christological intentions. 5. James Boyd White, When Words Lose Their Meaning: Constitutions and Reconstitutions of Language, Character, and Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 72. 6. Walter Brueggemann, “Meditation upon the Abyss: The Book of Jeremiah,” Word & World (Fall 2002): 340-50.

  • Waiting: Matthew 11: 2-6

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    Waiting

    Matthew 11: 2-6

    P.C. Enniss

    Trinity Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia

    Our lives are inevitably shaped by those for whom we wait. You ‘d better not shout, you ‘d better not cry; you ‘d better not pout; I ‘m telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town. Our lives are inevitably shaped by those for whom we wait. Some day hell come along, the man I love. And he ΊΙ be big and strong, the man I love. And when he comes my way, I’ll do my best to make him stay—the man I love. Our lives are inevitably shaped by those for whom we wait. Isaiah, in our Old Testament lesson, had a vision of one who was to come to redeem the world and to usher in God’s kingdom on earth. It was the single vision that fashioned Isaiah’s life, shaped by the one for whom he waited. My wife Janie’s grandfather—Presbyterian preacher of the old school—when he became quite elderly and blind, used to bore the family mercilessly with his incessant talk of looking forward to heaven—during family prayers, pleading with the Lord to take him home—in conversation at the dinner table, talking of how he couldn’t wait to meet Jesus face to face. Now, most of us would not want to put it quite that way. Nonetheless, there is an essential eschatological quality in our Christian faith. We may not be certain of every detail (or all agree even), but we do live in anticipation of a future not to be feared, when God’s purposes will be fulfilled. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered the human heart, all that God has prepared for those who trust in God.” While, in the meantime, we wait. Only even as we wait, the quality and the character of our lives are shaped by the one for whom we wait. Theologian Paul Tillich said, “Although waiting is not having, it is also having. The fact that we wait for something shows that in some way we already possess it.” Waiting, says Tillich, “anticipates that which is not yet real. If we wait and hope in patience, the power ofthat for which we wait is already effective within us. Those who wait, in an ultimate sense, are not that far from that for which they wait.” l Theologians

    like to talk of an “interim ethic,” by which they mean a way of behaving in the interim—between the time when Christ was here and time when he comes again—a time, for us, like now. You and I live in the interim. In fact, most of the New Testament is written from that perspective, in the interim, waiting for the fulfillment of time. St. Paul speaks of Christian life as “living on tiptoe,” as we wait, in anticipation. After all, what is the Christian life, if not the modeling on the promises of the one for whom we wait? Indeed, both Old and New Testaments are peppered with vivid descriptions and images—sometimes terrifying—ofthat final day when the Lord shall return—”with vengeance,” as Isaiah puts it—while other images portray the future in terms of gladness and divine fulfillment—”the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. The desert shall rejoice and blossom.” And, “The people shall see the glory of the Lord. The blind shall see; the deaf hear; the lame will leap like deer, and the speechless will sing for joy, as all sorrow and sighing shall flee away”—heavenly images. Again, in the New Testament Book of Revelation, John—old and exiled by now—foresees the finality of it all as a time when life will be so idyllic, there will no

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    longer be even a need for rules or laws—no Supreme Court—because people will all be kind and just. In fact, John says, there will be no holy temples in all God’s kingdom, no church in heaven—which means no preachers either, I suppose—because every act will be an act of worship, every deed done out of kindness, and all life will be praise because the law of God will be written upon our hearts. I do not need to tell you, that day has not come. Shove your way through Times Square on any Saturday night. God’s rule of love is hardly written yet on every human heart. Only, no one need go to Times Square to know God’s kingdom does not yet exist among us, or, for that matter, within our own selves. We live in the interim, which, as Auden reminds us, is always the most difficult time of all. The time being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all. There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, irregular verbs to learn, the time being to redeem—from insignificance. It really is the time being that gives us the most trouble, isn’t it? That period that stands between innocence and experience, between ignorance and wisdom, between doubt and faith. The time we spend in waiting—for the phone to ring, the plane to land, the letter to arrive, the check to come—waiting for—the grades to come in, for the lab report— waiting to see, to hear, to know—while the meantime is the most difficult. Apparently it was no less difficult a time for old John the Baptist, whom we read about in the second lesson. The lesson last Sunday gave a portrait of John coming down out of the hills, arrogant and cocksure, for John had seen Jesus. John had spent time with Jesus. John had baptized Jesus. John had bought in, for John had been born again—and, I suspect from appearances, was being a little obnoxious about it—not uncommon among new converts. But all that was last week. This week, time has passed. John has been put in prison, probably because his preaching was construed as treasonous—and where he is probably well aware that he is sentenced to death—which has had a sobering effect on his cockiness. In fact, John is even beginning to have second thoughts about Jesus, wondering if maybe he had been too quick to judge, because even though John is in prison, he hears the news. He has heard about Jesus healing the sick, and preaching hope to the oppressed—forgiving the most heinous of sinners, and giving them a second chance, and a third, and even more. And all this is very confusing to John, for it is not what he expected at all. Remember from last week, the Jesus that John started out preaching—and fully expected—was a kind of swashbuckling Savior who stormed across the countryside, sword in hand, meting out justice, toppling kings, replacing power in new partisan hands, separating the wheat from the chaff, and sending the unrighteous into ovens to burn like straw. The images in John’s mind of this coming Savior were harsh and violent—images of judgment, punishment, and repression for the unrighteous. The coming kingdom would be law and order—little place for grace—all images being challenged now by what he is hearing reported of Jesus’ peculiar activity—to the point that John smuggles a letter out of prison, asks Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”—because clearly, John is confused. Jesus is turning out not at all as he had expected. Truth is, Jesus rarely is what we first expect. So little wonder John is bewildered, and beginning to question his expectation, because expectations do have their way of shaping perceptions. At Harvard, several years ago, there was conducted a very serious experiment

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    designed to test the power of expectation over perception. The test became known as “The Experiment of the Red Six of Spades,” and consisted of giving the person being tested a deck of cards, and instructing that person to thumb through it to see if there was anything unusual about it. Only the deck is rigged. The six of spades is red, instead of black. The experiment revealed, in most cases, a person would not recognize the irregularity. Because most everyone is familiar with a deck of cards, we expect all spades to be black; and although we see the red six of spades, our expectation overrides our perception. So that, in the case of the experiment, seeing is not believing. Literally, you don’t believe your eyes. That is something of what was happening with John. John expected one kind of Savior. God had sent another, and John was having trouble believing his own eyes— and ears—which prompts the inquiry, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we be looking for another?”—implying, another who conforms more narrowly to my expectation. Jesus’ response is instructive, not only to John, but to us. Jesus says to the messenger, “Go back to John. Tell John what you see and hear. Those who are blind, receive their sight; the lame walk; the sick are healed; the dead raised up; the sinful forgiven; the poor helped; and the oppressed set free.” Tell John what you see. Tell John the kingdom that is to come—already breaking in, and for which the world waits—is a kingdom characterized by compassion, mercy, love, and justice for all. Go tell John what you see, and what he can expect. What is the character of the kingdom for which we wait, you and I? What is it we expect—really expect out of Christmas—as we await the one who comes? Someone has observed that people tend to make out of life pretty much what they make out of Christmas. I think that is true, don’t you? Life tends to mean for us what Christmas means. So, if Christmas means little more than the annual midwinter solstice, a break from winter doldrums, bonus time, Christmas carnival time, a boost for the economy, entertainment for the children, and an increasing endorsement of Amreican consumerism —if that is all we expect from Christmas—then life—once life returns to normal, returns to the meantime—life will probably amount to little more. If, however, Christmas is perceived as the radical entrance of one who literally wants to change the way the world thinks, operates, perceives reality—then life in the ensuing meantime is more likely to follow that pattern. Life for us will mean for us precisely what Christmas means. No, the role of John, on this third Sunday of Advent, is to help us clarify our expectations—because our lives are inevitably shaped by those for whom we wait. Janie’ s grandfather, the same grandfather who irritated the family so with his incessant chatter of wanting to join Jesus in heaven, had another equally irritating characteristic. It was his utter unconcern for the things of this world. The family gave him a gold watch for his birthday. He promptly gave it away to a beggar (said nobody needed a watch in heaven). They sent him money every month to supplement his pitiful little church pension. He sent it to the missionaries. They bought him a new felt hat for Christmas. First Sunday after Christmas, Granddaddy wore his new hat to church, then sat on it in the car all the way home from church. When reminded of how much the hat cost, and chastised for his carelessness, he simply shrugged and allowed as nobody would know the difference in a hundred years—besides, “Who needs a hat in heaven anyway?”—which really did not help much at the moment (though I think the family understands better now). Our behavior is inevitably shaped by the one for whom we

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    wait. For there is a sense, which is quite real, that even as we live out our days—in the interim—we already possess, and are possessed by, the one for whom we wait. Karen, a student at Union Theological Seminary, was living and studying in New York City, while her newly-lawyered husband had gone to work for a law firm in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They saw each other only on the weekends. In homiletics class, Karen described what her Fridays were like when John came to Penn Station by train in time for a late supper. “I usually get up early on Friday to clean the apartment before coming up here to school,” she said, “Then, after classes, I make a kind of safari down Broadway. I stop for groceries, pick up a bottle of wine, stop at a favorite flower stall for fresh flowers; and when I get home, I have just enough time to get myself and supper ready. Then John comes.” Only Karen went on to add, “The funny thing about it is that from morning until he arrives, I have this strange feeling that he is already with me—not really—but really.” In Advent, the one for whom we wait is already here, shaping and giving hope and substance to our lives—not really—but really.

    Note

    1. The Shaking of the Foundations (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955). In the last sentence of the quote, I have updated Tillich’s language to make it more inclusive.

  • Holy waiting

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    Holy Waiting

    Kimberly Bracken Long

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    It happens almost every year. It’s Thanksgiving weekend, and your husband has outdone himself in the kitchen, cooking a feast that Emeril would have envied; people will be talking about it for years. You wonder if you really could have gained five pounds in the last two days and you know that the answer is yes. It’s been a warm and cozy holiday with family and dear friends gathered around the groaning board and lo, it is Sunday morning. Time to go to church and give thanks for so many blessings. And then it happens. The lector turns to the Gospel of Matthew and reads:

    But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. (Matthew 24:36-42; Advent 1, Year A)

    It is, of course, the first week of Advent. And all of a sudden that nice warm glow dissipates into an unmistakable sense of dis-ease. You find yourself scowling at the preacher who, of course, never deviates from the lectionary. The mood is gone; the party’s over. Or perhaps it happens like this. Thanksgiving was lousy. It was just the two of you – or maybe just you – you’re not speaking to your brothers, it’s too close to the anniversary of your mother’s death, and all of your friends – what few you have of them – are out of town. They probably wouldn’t have invited you over anyway, and you’re such a lousy cook you wouldn’t have dared to invite them. And so goes another holiday. At least there’s church – you can usually find a little comfort there. Except that it’s the first Sunday of Advent, and you have to listen hard to hear some good news:

    But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven… .But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will

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    come.. .(Mark 13:24-37, 32; Advent 1, Year B)

    Or maybe it’s not about Thanksgiving for you. Maybe you’re the one who’s been shopping since October and totally grooving on the Christmas carols in the mall. You can’t help but wonder why church has to be so gloomy when everyone else is having such a good time. Why are we hearing about the end of the world instead of singing “Joy to the World”? What’s the matter with enjoying a little Christmas spirit while we wait for the big day to arrive? Advent. It’s the liturgical season we love to hate. You have heard stories like these from folks in your church, or maybe you’ve told them (or secretly harbored them) yourself. The rest of the world, it seems, is reveling in a month-long celebration, feasting and shopping and going to parties from late November till December 25, while the church is wringing its hands about the end of time. Advent, it seems, is one great tug-of-war. There is conflict between our biblical and liturgical instincts that insist, on the one hand, that we observe a period of preparation before the great feast of Christmas. We require time to reflect on the depth of our need for a Savior. And yet, on the other hand, we are desperate for some joy ! We face the hard truths about ourselves and the world all throughout the year. What’s wrong with a little merrymaking around the holidays? Besides, the kids are excited, the parents want to have a pageant, and everyone’s eager to start singing all those great Christmas carols we only get to enjoy once a year. What’s a pastor to do? There is no season of the church year that is more fraught with tension than Advent – and no other time that reminds us so clearly of just how countercultural it is to be the church. The truth is that you don’t have to scratch the surface very hard to see that it’s not “the rest of the world” that’s whooping it up, but only those with the cash (or the plastic) to do so. You don’t have to look very far at all, in fact, to see why it makes a difference that we sing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” before we get around to “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” A look at the morning paper or the evening news will do it; every canned food drive and Salvation Army bellringer reminds us, too. I remember every time I see a woman I’ll call Annie. Whether it’s Advent or not, she reminds me of the holy waiting with which the church is charged. Annie sleeps outside, in doorways near the church building. Sometimes she meets us in the fellowship hall for lunch after worship, sometimes she joins us in the sanctuary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her sing, but whenever the Lord’s table is spread she comes forward for a hunk of bread and some juice. One Sunday she came fresh from a beating, her face swollen and bruised and glistening with antibiotic salve. She was seeking food and also, perhaps, the murmuring voices and comforting hands of the women who hovered over her. When I see Annie I remember why the world needs a Savior. Why we pray, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” Why we must sing “Come, thou long-expected Jesus.” When I see Annie I remember why, at least once a year, the church must hear the words of Mary’s song:

    He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich empty away. (Luke 1:52-53)

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    I remember why Annie needs a Savior to release her from hunger and poverty and violence. 1 remember why I need a Savior to forgive me for allowing such things to happen to her. I remember why we all need a Savior to make the world as God intended it to be. I remember why we need Advent. Yes, there is a tension here, and we feel it. On the one hand, there is rejoicing to be done ! God’s promise of a messiah has been fulfilled – we have heard the good news of Jesus’ birth and we want to shout it out loud ! There is cause for feasting and dancing and singing! The Savior has come, we have seen the light of Christ break through the darkness, and we are eager to remember and celebrate his birth. On the other hand, we are all too aware that the new age inaugurated by Christ has not yet been made complete. While there is a great event to celebrate, there is so much to bewail about the state of the world. Jesus was born, to be sure, but he has yet to come again. In Advent, more than any other time of the church year, we feel the tension between repenting and rejoicing. In his book, Waiting for the Coming, J. Neil Alexander notes this tension, as well. He asks, “Should we relieve this stress even if we thought we could? and, Could we relieve this stress even if we thought we should?” In other words, “do we relieve or live into the tension of Advent?”1 In answering, he takes his cue from the church’s liturgical history. He notes that in Gaul, where some of the earliest Advent traditions seem to have emerged, the season had “a Lent-like character”; it was a time of introspection and penitence. In Rome, however, quite a different tone developed. Instead of Gaul’s purples and blacks, the liturgical colors were white and gold, and the season took on a quality of joyful expectation. Throughout the centuries, in various times and places, it is possible to see both of these emphases in Christians’ Advent observances. The church, it seems, has never been able to settle for one interpretation or the other – Advent was either a time of eager anticipation or one of eschatological dread. In the end, Alexander decides that this is at it should be, for both represent a part of God’s revelation in Christ.2 And so we choose to live into the tension of Advent – to throw ourselves into joyful longing for Christ’s coming, giving thanks for the overwhelming gift of grace we have already received and – at the same time – to confess our failure to live as God intended and to pray for mercy in the face of the final judgment that will bring about the completion of all creation. These are not mutually exclusive impulses, as Alexander points out. For even as we confess our desperate need for a Savior – even as we are sure that we could not stand in the face of God’s righteousness – we know that the Christ for whom we yearn has already come, that salvation is promised, and that one great day all God’s children will be gathered up and a new heaven and a new earth will be our eternal reality. The truth we experience in Advent, then, is that the first and second comings of Christ “are inextricably intertwined, the warp and woof of the weeks before Christmas.” As Alexander puts it, “Advent is that point in our proclamation and prayer when past and future meet in our experience of the present: came, coming, here!”3, A recent paraphrase of the Magnificat brings the point home. In Rory Cooney ‘ s “Canticle of the Turning,” we remember how Mary sang:

    My soul cries out with a joyful shout that the God of my heart is great, And my spirit sings of the wondrous things that you bring to the ones who wait.

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    You fixed your sight on your servant’s plight, and my weakness you did not spurn. So from east to west shall my name be blest. Could the world be about to turn?

    But we don’t just remember that one day long ago these words were attributed to a young woman who would become Tlteotokos. Her song also gives us a vision of God’s future:

    From the halls of power to the fortress tower, not a stone will be left on stone. Let the king beware for your justice tears ev’ry tyrant from his throne. The hungry poor shall weep no more, for the food they can never earn; There are tables spread, ev’ry mouth be fed, for the world is about to turn.

    Again, this is not only a proclamation of future hope, but also a claim for today, as is made clear by the hymn’s refrain:

    My heart shall sing of the day you bring, Let the fires of your justice burn. Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn !4

    This is a present happening! Christ is in our midst as we remember his coming, renew our hope, and act out God’s vision of the world to come, here and now. This is what Laurence Stookey calls “living at the intersection of time and eternity.” The past becomes a real and living part of our present, for as we remember the birth of Christ so long ago, “the Risen One holds all time in unity, and by the Holy Spirit brings all things to our remembrance in this way.”5 And so we sing Advent songs in the present tense: “‘Sleepers, wake!’ A voice astounds us; The shout of rampart guards surrounds us: ‘Awake, Jerusalem, arise!’” This baby was not only born long ago, but is born to us again, today. It is the same sort of phenomenon we experience whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper. We do not just remember a meal of Jesus long ago, but we share it ourselves. In this anamnesis the past is made present as Christ meets us in bread and wine. In the same way, Stookey explains, the future is also brought into our present (prolepsis). By the power of the Holy Spirit we can envision the coming reign of God; in our worship and our work we act out the promises of the kingdom.6 It happens whenever we baptize. Each time water is poured out we profess that all are made one in Christ – there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female – we are all equally honored and anointed. It’s the promise we have received for the world to come; it’s the one we act out in the sacrament and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in every personal and political encounter. Here in Advent, memory and hope are heightened. The infant Jesus inhabits our lives, and the Christ who is coming again gives us glimpses of the world as it will be. It happened to Nora Gallagher when she was least expecting it. “In the midst of the Christmas rush – shopping, wrapping presents, sending cards – Advent breaks in on me,” she writes. “I hear the voice of John.” She is helping to serve a meal at the soup kitchen hosted by her church It is a special meal, a feast they share just before Christmas. And they’ve got the works! Turkey and stuffing and gravy, green beans

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    and salad and homemade cranberry sauce. The room is full. Most of the guests are men, but there is one table of women and children near the station where Gallagher is working. She sees them, and then it happens.

    I scoop the salad, put it on a plate, put the plate on a tray. At one point, I turn from the salad to face the room. It happens without warning, just as I turn. I see the people in the room in slow motion, as if they are moving through molasses. Their faces are shining. A middle-aged woman walks across the room holding in front of her a plate piled with food; she smiles at the man she is about to serve. Between them, for a second, I see a cord drawn taut, a connection of light. Her face is lit up. She places the food in front of him, sways slightly, as if she were onboard a ship, then rights herself and walks away. One of the women with the children looks up. Our eyes meet. She points at her daughter, who is eating a huge plate of turkey and stuffing, and we both laugh.

    This is her Advent vision. “We prepare by this,” she says, “by falling down before each other.”7 There, for a moment, holiday chaos and poverty’s weariness collide, and the collision causes something to break open – some unexplainable joy, some glimpse of heaven, some bright hope where none was expected to shine. The memory of a holy birth and the hope of promises fulfilled, lived in this unexpected present moment. It is a sighting as she leans into the kingdom of God. Perhaps it is fitting that Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year, for leaning into the kingdom is what the Christian life is all about. After a long season of ordinary time, when we deepen our understanding of God’s past dealings with us and sharpen our vision of the reign of God that is to come, we proclaim that Christ indeed is King, that he will reign over all of creation in mercy and justice and love. The end of the liturgical year is its beginning, for that triumphant proclamation is enough to make us yearn with increased longing for the kingdom to come. Yes, that’s the way we want the world to be! That is the Messiah we crave! Come, Lord Jesus – maranathal And so we enter into another Advent, another season of holy waiting. This holy waiting is not passive, but active, for Advent is a time of journeying together from the world’s deep darkness to the dawning of Christ’s light. It is, as Neil Alexander says, less about “the reason for the season” than it is about renewing our real, deep hope for the world.8 Over the course of four weeks the Advent texts exhort us to watch with expectancy, for “salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed (Romans 13:11 ). As we watch and wait, we are called to repent, that we might be ready when Christ does come to take us all home and make peace and justice the way of the world. Praying for a new heaven and a new earth, we rejoice as we claim the promised vision:

    The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing as on a day of festival.

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    I will remove disaster from you, so that you will not bear reproach for it. I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth. At that time I will bring you home, at the time when I gather you; for I will make you renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth, when I restore your fortunes before your eyes, says the Lord. (Zephaniah 3:17-20; Advent 3, Year C)

    Then, as Advent moves toward Christmas, and we hear the joy and hope of Mary’s song, we make our final preparations to receive the One who is born, again, for our sakes and for the sake of the world. As we progress through the weeks of Advent – watching, repenting, rejoicing, and preparing – we see the two emphases the church has always held in balance. We tell the truth about ourselves and our need for a Savior; we come face to face with the world’s sorry state, and our part in it, and ask for forgiveness and renewal. And, at the same time, we give thanks and praise because we know the promise has been made and its fulfillment is sure: Christ has come and he will come again. As we live into the tension of Advent, both repenting and rejoicing, we find ourselves at odds with the other calendars that lay claim to our lives. That is part of the tension, too – embracing the cycle of the church year brings us into conflict, again and again, with the cycles of the school year, the civic year, the church program year, and the cycles of our personal lives. And yet this tension is not defeating, but lifegiving . Nora Gallagher puts it this way:

    I am here preparing for a Eucharist in Advent, living by a calendar that runs parallel to my Day-Timer, a counterweight, one time set against another. The church calendar calls into consciousness the existence of a world uninhabited by efficiency, a world filled with the excessiveness of saints, ashes, smoke, and fire; it fills my heart with both dread and hope. It tells of journeys and mysteries, things “seen and unseen,” the world of the almost known. It dreams impossibilities: a sea divided into, five thousand fed by a loaf and two fishes, a man raised from the dead. My daily calendar reminds me that what I experience in the world of faith must be measured against what I see, what is happening around me… In “The Production of the World,” his essay on Van Gogh, John Berger writes: “For an animal its natural environment and habitat are a given; for a man [sic]… reality is not a given: it has to be continually sought out, held – 1 am tempted to say salvaged.” Faith is the name I put to the seeking out, the holding, the salvage operation.9

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    Indeed, the “salvage operation” of Advent faith calls us to recognize God’s reality – in the memory of a Savior who was born to live and die as one of us – in the hope in this Christ who will come again – and in the sure conviction that, here and now, “the world is about to turn!” This is our holy waiting, full of repentance and rejoicing. If we’re watching, we might even have sightings of our own as we lean into the coming reign of God.

    Notes

    1. J. Neil Alexander, Waiting for the Coming: The Liturgical Meaning of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany (Washington, D.C.: Pastoral Press, 1993), 23-24. 2. Alexander, 8, 20. 3. Alexander, 25, 26. 4. Rory Cooney, “Canticle of the Turning,” in Gather (Chicago: GIA Publications, Inc., 1994), 376. 5. Laurence Hull Stookey, Calendar: Christ’s Time for the Church (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 32. 6. Stookey, 32 7. Nora Gallagher, Things Seen and Unseen. A Year Lived in Faith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), 26-27. 8. Alexander, 26-27. 9. Gallagher, 3-4.

  • Bridging Christian ethics and economic life: where pastors and laity disconnect

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    Bridging Christian Ethics and Economic Life:

    Where Pastors and Laity Disconnect

    John C. Knapp The Southern Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, Decatur, Georgia

    Are traditional models of ministry adequate to support Christians struggling with ethical challenges in today ‘ s workplaces? This is a question academic researchers and church leaders alike are asking with greater urgency as they seek a better understanding of the gap that often seems to separate faith and economic life. In a national study conducted over the last two years by students in Columbia Theological Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry program, more than 100 personal interviews with church members yielded two notable conclusions. First, Christians in a wide range of secular occupations have little difficulty naming ethical challenges encountered in their work lives. More than 70 distinct issues were cited including financial fraud, product safety, race discrimination, conflicts of interest, employee dismissals, bankruptcy, tax evasion, privacy violations, fair pricing, debt collection, resume fraud and sex harassment, among others. Second, they rarely, if ever, seek pastoral counsel when struggling with issues at work. Their principal reasons for not doing so are a perception that pastors lack business insight and knowledge; a belief that the church is indifferent to the business sphere of life; a lack of confidence in the church’s management of its own business affairs; and a perception that in many congregations the culture discourages members from bringing work-related concerns to church.

    Background and Method Most students in Columbia’s Doctor of Ministry program are pastors seeking to enrich their ministries in the parish or other settings. Over a two-year period, a geographically and theologically diverse group of these students enrolled in an elective course on “Ministry with Business People.”1 As apre-course assignment, each conducted individual interviews with at least five people who were members of churches and employed in business, professional, government or secular not-forprofit occupations.2 The following questions were asked:

    1. Can you describe at least one moral or ethical concern that has affected you personally in your career or work life? (If no answer, go to question 3) 2. Was the church helpful to you in addressing the concern(s)? If so, how? If not, what might have been helpful? 3. Can you recall specific sermons, classes or other ways that the church has offered practical guidance or help in your business or professional life? 4. Have you ever sought advice or counsel from a pastor regarding a business- or career-related concern? If so, was it helpful? If you have not done so, what considerations might help you determine whether to seek pastoral counsel about a business matter? 5. On the whole, do you think the church does enough to help members integrate their faith with their lives at work? If not, how might we do better?

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    Interviews were completed with 102 individual respondents, including executives , managers and employees of large corporations, small businesses, medical providers, government agencies, professional firms, and other employment contexts. Approximately one-third of the respondents were members of the students’ own congregations. They ranged in age from early twenties to late sixties ; about 40 percent were female.

    Ethical Issues at Work A significant finding was the ease with which respondents could recall ethical issues they had encountered at work. They named and described an astounding variety of matters involving relationships with co-workers, employers, subordinates, customers , suppliers, partners, and others. Following are a few typical examples:

    An employee of a small business discovered that his boss, the owner, was increasing the amount of an insurance claim for water damage by adding undamaged, obsolete inventory to the list of goods that were legitimately damaged. A sales representative was asked to sell advertising to sponsor cable television programming with content that he considered immoral. An executive in a family business became estranged from a family member after a confrontation in which the executive accused the family member of failing to do his share of the work. A store manager was told by her corporate office to reduce the number of full-time workers at her location, making it her responsibility to decide which employees would lose their jobs. An investment adviser faced daily temptations to boost his commission income by recommending unnecessary transactions to his clients. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a hospital administrator tried to quell employee and community hostility toward the Arab-Americans who comprised approximately 25 percent of the hospital’s medical staff.

    Pastoral Counsel For most respondents, these situations and others like them were accompanied by significant psychological stress. Many also found such issues spiritually challenging, as they sought to apply Christian values and teachings in practical ways. One confessed, “Looking back, I made the wrong decision, which makes me wonder how deep is my faith?” And an architect, who filed a lawsuit to collect a past-due debt, recalled, “I hated the way the decision was making me feel, and I wondered if God wouldn’t want me to simply walk away so I could feel clean again. ‘Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.’ Was I supposed to take that literally?” Despite a widely shared belief that one’s faith should inform ethical decisionmaking at work, only 18 respondents had ever consulted a pastor for advice about such a matter.3 Of these, six were dissatisfied with the experience, including an entrepreneur who angrily moved his church membership after a pastor made light of his concern that his product might be seen as exploiting children. More revealing were the perspectives of those who had never sought pastoral counsel regarding a business- or career-related

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    issue.4 These respondents cited four primary reasons for not seeking such advice, the first being a general perception that pastors lack the business insight and knowledge to be of any assistance:

    “I think preachers spend a lot of time, and rightly so, thinking about ancient problems. And while I’m sure people in Bible times wrestled with tough problems, our world is very different from theirs, so I doubt that my pastor would be very much help.” “Clergy are perceived solely as spiritual advisers; they are placed on a pedestal and not seen as advisors to businesspeople.” “To do this would presume that the minister had some specific knowledge of business, the issues involved in a particular situation, and of likely consequences for short- and long-term profits.” “[The] minister is not in tune with today’s workplace and could not relate . . . so it would be better to talk with someone who would automatically understand without getting me frustrated.” “I just do not feel that pastors have the experience to address these issues.”

    A second frequently cited reason was a perception that the church itself is indifferent to the business sphere of life:

    “I did not approach the church because ethical issues in business are not of interest to any preacher I know. There is more of an emphasis on your family and how you live your personal life.” “My pastor has no idea what I do for a living, and has never shown any interest in finding out by starting a conversation on the subject. He knows a great deal about my family though.” “The church rarely addresses these types of issues. It seems to be more directed toward individual relationships with Christ.” “I do not think it is an interest of the church to help one resolve work problems.” “Pastors are too busy taking care of the sick and dying to get involved in people’s work whims and troubles.” “Church is a place to get spiritually centered. I’m not sure it wants a role in workplace matters.”

    A third reason for not seeking pastoral counsel was a lack of confidence in the church’s management of its own business, a factor not unrelated to the first:

    “How well does the church conduct its business affairs? Would any of their practices be relevant for the world?” “The church is not a good example itself. Consequently, church officers burn out or become too attached to their responsibilities.” “The church’s support comes from businesspeople, but we are not always confident the church manages that money responsibly.” “I see all the same problems in the church working environment.”

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    The final often-mentioned reason was a perception that the culture of many congregations discourages members from bringing work-related concerns to church:

    “I feel like my church has a norm that business doesn’t belong in church. There is the occasional joy of a promotion, or a shared concern about unemployment, but never teaching or conversation about one’s faith in the workplace.” “The church expects us to handle those situations personally.” “This [survey interview] is the first time a preacher has ever asked me anything about my career. Do we just have the idea we aren’t supposed to talk much about this stuff at church?” “I would like to see the church allow people to share their work experiences. It would be refreshing if there was an openness to suggestions on applying church life to work life.” “It would be important to feel the freedom to talk about work-related problems with my pastor, but for some reason it seems it wouldn’t be appropriate.” “Many of us go to church as a respite from our weekday stress. Business isn’t something people really want brought up at church.”

    Other barriers preventing respondents from seeking pastoral counsel included fear of judgmental responses, concerns about confidentiality, and a reluctance to bother ministers with matters that might be deemed trivial.

    Preaching It is significant that no respondent recalled a sermon specifically aimed at addressing business or workplace issues. However, several gave examples of sermons on more general topics (e.g., love, forgiveness, tolerance) that could apply in a variety of social situations. A corporate executive said her pastor’s sermons “offer generally useful wisdom, but never any examples to connect it to the workplace.” A grocery store manager echoed her sentiments, “The church teaches me to live as a Christian, but I have to apply those principles to my life and work on my own.”

    Implications for Christians in Secular Occupations The doctoral students conducting these interviews were astonished that Christians , particularly friends and members of their own churches, routinely face ethical challenges in their workplaces, yet consider clergy to be of very little value as they wrestle with these concerns. For nearly all the pastors, these interviews were the first conversations they had ever initiated with lay people on the subject of ethics in business or occupational life. Likewise, the conversations were the first on this subject that most of the respondents ever had with a pastor. “Ethical and moral issues seem to abound within the business community, both profit and non-profit,” noted one student, “and the overwhelming conclusion is that the church is not addressing these concerns. But the reason why is still a difficult question to answer.” It may be a difficult question, but it is not a new one for writers and scholars who have given it considerable attention in recent years. Edward R. Dayton observes, “Few churches appreciate their business people as a window on the world and fewer still

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    provide business people with opportunities to discuss in depth the integration of business and Christian values.”5 Doug Sherman and William Hendricks report a study with findings similar to our own. In their survey of 2,000 Christians who regularly attend church, 90 percent responded “no” to the question, “Have you ever in your life heard a sermon, read a book, listened to a tape, or been to a seminar that applied biblical principles to everyday work issues?” Their conclusion: “All of this suggests that the church has grown virtually silent on the subject of work.”6 Similarly, research by Laura Nash and Scotty McLennan found that many Christians are “looking for ways to live their Christian beliefs and values at work, as they do at home and at church.” But despite their best efforts, “even deeply faithful Christians in business tend to feel a strong disconnect between their experience of the church or private faith, and the spirit-challenging conditions of the workplace.”7 This feeling, expressed by many of our own interviewees, is itself spirit-challenging for businesspeople whose attempts to find coherence give rise to “significant psychological and moral uncertainty.”8 This disconnection of faith and work can be seen as a division of life into two distinct compartments, at times dynamically related to each other, at other times entirely separate. Writes David A. Krueger, “For some people religious life and business practice are integrally related in a creative tension. For others – both clergy and business professionals – the worlds of church and corporate life are galaxies apart, separated by ignorance, hostility, apathy, language, interests, values.”9

    Pressures to Disconnect Nash, as well, uses the term “creative tensions” in identifying seven paradoxes, or “oppositions,” that appear contradictory but cannot be ignored because they are “nonetheless true.”10 Examples of such tensions are people needs versus profit obligations, love versus competition, humility versus the ego of success.

    Failure to confront the problem of the businessperson as Christian and the Christian as businessperson is damaging to the Christian executive. He or she may view success in business as alien to a Christian worldview, or may feel secretly guilty about work because it is a kind of secondary calling. In either case, the “real me” – the one who prays and communes with God and knows how this-world activities should be conducted – is the one that exists outside working hours. For a business leader, this is a very small part of his or her day.11

    It is widely recognized that tensions of this sort are commonly experienced in business life, with some theorists arguing that the solution lies not in confronting the problem or, as Krueger proposes, in forging “a proper connection between the church and the world of business . . . that is both prophetic and supportive, critical and constructive.”12 Rather, they contend that business people and the church need to more clearly delineate the boundary separating the two spheres, accepting that they need not and cannot be reconciled. In a famous Harvard Business Review article, Albert Z. Canoffers this advice to the businessperson whose “conscience, perhaps spurred by religious idealism, troubles him”:13

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    That most businessmen are not indifferent to ethics in their private lives, everyone will agree. My point is that in their office lives they cease to be private citizens; they become game players who must be guided by a somewhat different set of ethical standards… .14

    Carr’s strategy assumes a willingness and ability on the part of the individual to accept the premise that one’s moral commitments and responsibilities should be determined by, and may vary according to, the roles and contexts in which one finds oneself. For the Christian this is no easy task, since to proclaim “Christ as Lord of all is to suggest that God’s kingdom penetrates all of life and that the moral demands of discipleship… reach into every system and institutional arrangement. To affirm such a universalism of faith requires us to denounce dichotomies like ‘sacred and secular,’ which can provide conceptual crutches for the artificial compartmentalization of faith and the various spheres of life.”15 The theologian Helmut Thielicke is another who challenges efforts to limit God’s influence to the inward, spiritual life by withdrawing the “lordship of God from the ‘worldly’ sphere, trying, as it were, to make this lordship private rather than public.”16 He shows that the church has been at least as responsible as the laity for attempting to divide life into “two spheres of existence which have nothing to do with one another, spheres which are subject to very different laws and which divide the Christian person – through whom the dividing frontier passes – into two completely separate and isolated segments.”17 The dangerous result, he warns, is the “establishment of a temporal sphere in which the radical commandments of the Sermon on the Mount do not seem to apply, a sphere which consequently cannot be called into question.”18 If we conclude, then, that deliberate compartmentalization is neither a faithful nor satisfactory option, the alternative is for the church to actually support the businessperson in strengthening the vital connection between Christian faith and that portion of life that accounts for most of his or her waking hours and productive years. If we accept this as an imperative for ministry, what role should pastors play in providing such support? And how, if at all, might they be motivated and equipped for this task?

    Implications for Clergy Given the findings of our study, it is not surprising that respondents who did find work-related guidance at church were more likely to say it came from other lay people than from clergy. The most helpful resources cited by interviewees were lay-led small groups where study topics related to business and career concerns. A number of these groups were independent and ecumenical or were organized by parachurch organizations , indicating a willingness of businesspeople to look outside their local churches for resources to meet their needs. It is beyond the scope of this paper to propose specific models of ministry to meet the needs of businesspeople; however, it should be noted that a number of important contributions to this effort are being made. Nash and McLennan have added greatly to the church’s practical body of knowledge by analyzing the complexities of the problem and proposing a framework for future engagement. Krueger has proposed an equally valuable, if less comprehensive, six-point process based on his experience with a clergy education project aimed at enhancing clergy sensitivity to business and workplace realities.

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    Our field interviews confirmed and expanded upon what other researchers have learned: Most pastors are ill-prepared to assist parishioners in their efforts to connect their faith and work lives. This weakness emerges in sharp relief against the broad landscape of ethical challenges routinely encountered in the workplace, and it is significant for at least two reasons. First, it is when the Christian is in the teeth of an ethical dilemma that he or she is likely to feel the greatest tension between the claims of faith and demands of work. We suspect that when things are going smoothly, it is far easier for most people to tolerate a disconnection between these spheres of life. Second, times of ethical difficulty produce both a desire to turn to one’s faith (and presumably one’s church) for guidance, as well as a rich opportunity for the pastor to address work-related concerns in a manner that has practical value to the parishioner. Our study found considerable agreement among church members in their perceptions of clergy, confirming an observation of Nash and McLennan: “Some businesspeople seeking to bring Christianity into their work lives actually welcome the input of clergy, but they can’t find it.”19 A consequence, they point out, is that lay people have begun to develop resources to meet this need on their own, often through parachurch initiatives, some of which more properly belong to the popular “spirituality -and-business movement” than to any sectarian tradition.20 Like Krueger, they argue that today ‘ s clergy must radically change their attitudes and ways of relating to laity, learning to minister with businesspeople as willing listeners and mutual learners.

    Conclusion For preachers, several lessons emerge from our conversations with church members. While many working people struggle to make their faith relevant to the activity that involves most of their waking hours and productive years – a struggle that can involve intense spiritual strain when ethical issues are encountered – they may feel that the church and members of clergy are indifferent to their plight. This perception has deep roots in the history and culture of our churches; yet many preachers unwittingly reinforce it by failing to take an active interest in parishioners’ work lives. Those who wish to make ministry more relevant to economic life might begin by asking two questions: How often – and how well – do I preach about the relationship of Christian faith to the sometimes harsh realities of today’s workplaces? And, how much do I know – and care – about the weekday challenges and aspirations of the people with whom I minister on Sunday morning?

    Notes

    1. These denominations were Presbyterian Church (USA), Southern Baptist, United Methodist, United Church of Christ, African Methodist Episcopal, American Baptist and Anglican. 2. Other assignments in the course included required readings from a variety of theological and business texts, daily discussions of relevant questions, structured dialogues with diverse business guests, and a final paper envisioning models of ministry that might more effectively connect Christian ethics and economic life. 3. Another five reported that they had sought pastoral counsel about a contemplated career or job change. 4. For simplicity, the term business is often used herein to refer to the full range of remunerative, secular occupations. Businessperson is similarly used. 5. Edward R. Dayton, Succeeding in Business Without Losing Your Faith (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992), 123-24. 6. Doug Sherman and William Hendricks, Your Work Matters to God, Your Work Matters to God

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    (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1987), 16. The authors have little expectation that this situation will change through the leadership of clergy; therefore, they devote a chapter to defining a role for lay people as the “new clergy” in establishing ministries with business people, including small groups. 7. Laura Nash and Scotty McClennan, Church on Sunday, Work on Monday: The Challenge of Fusing Christian Values with Business Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 5. 8. Ibid., 7. 9. David A Krueger, “Connecting Ministry with the Corporate World,” in On Moral Business, ed. Max L. Stackhouse, et. al. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), 882. 10. Laura L. Nash, Believers in Business (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994), 39. 11. Ibid., 60; cf. Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, 7. The Christian is to be a “visible sign” of the gospel as “salt, light and sheep,” not succumbing to the temptation to dissociate the spiritual situation from the material one, despising the material situation, denying that it has any meaning, declaring that it is neutral and does not concern eternal life. This is exactly what Jesus Christ calls hypocrisy.” 12. Krueger, 882. 13. Albert Z. Carr, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?” Harvard Business Review (January-February 1968), 143. 14. Ibid., 144. 15. Krueger, 882; cf. H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1937), 39. Church and society are “both subject to a common constitution, the will of God declared in Scripture and nature.” 16. Helmut Thielicke, Theological Ethics, Vol /, 8. 17. Ibid., 362-63. 18. Ibid., 364. 19. Nash and McLennan, 213. 20. Ibid., 239.

  • Preaching the Easter season texts

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    Preaching the Easter Season Texts

    Catherine Gunsalus González

    Decatur, Georgia

    The General Themes The Easter season has as its basic theme death and resurrection. That is obvious. Yet that theme is nuanced and applied in a great variety of ways, enough to take us from Ash Wednesday all the way to Easter and beyond. That should not be surprising, since death and resurrection is the heart of the gospel message itself. For the early church, when the celebration of Christmas had not yet begun, every week remembered the death and resurrection of Jesus. Every Sunday was a little Easter. There was a great Easter celebration once a year. At that time, the candidates for baptism were given their final preparation, in order to be baptized on Easter Eve. Our Lent has developed from that time of final preparation, expanded from a few weeks, to include forty days. The forty days is parallel to the time Jesus spent in the wilderness after his baptism, as well as the forty days in Noah’s ark, and the forty years Israel spent in the wilderness before crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land. For the Lenten season, the count excludes Sundays, because they remain a time of rejoicing and cannot be considered a penitential season as Lent became. Easter Eve was considered the most appropriate time for baptism because it showed that baptism was a dying with Christ and a rising with him. Candidates had been part of the Good Friday services, and then, on Saturday night, they joined in his death so that they could rise with him on Sunday morning, as part of the church, the body of Christ. Repentance is a natural part of the preparation for baptism. It is a repudiation of the old life of sin and an acceptance of the new life of righteousness. Such a new life is not a human possibility. Only through Christ’s death and resurrection is the way open for us to follow, dying to the old and rising to the new. Baptism does not end the struggle between the old and the new, so repentance also is a part of the life of Christians after baptism as well as before. By the time the Lenten tradition was fully developed in the Middle Ages, most people were baptized as infants, so the period before Easter was understood as a time for renewal of the meaning of baptism.

    Ash Wednesday The Easter season begins with Lent, a time of repentance, inaugurated on Ash Wednesday. The readings are common to all three cycles of the church year-Α, B, and C. The readings generally assume that people are beginning a time of fasting, and the stress is that ceremonial fasting is not enough. What God wishes is the transformation of life from the ways of sin to the ways of justice and righteousness, not just a carrying out of the religious traditions of the season. The lessons are very strong. Putting together the Isaiah and the II Corinthian texts makes very clear that religious services are not at all what God intends for us in the season. We are aiming to become what Paul describes: righteous people who are able to withstand the temptations of the world around us and live as God intends all human beings to live. As the church year becomes more familiar to many churches that never stressed it in the past, and as it is renewed

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    in churches that have based their worship on it for centuries, a very serious, clear beginning of the Easter season with an Ash Wednesday service is very important. It sets the tone for what will follow.

    The First Five Sundays of Lent The Sundays in the Lenten season do not follow the pattern of most of the rest of the lectionary, where all of the Gospel lessons come from the same synoptic Gospel. The Gospel lessons in Lent are chosen to reflect the themes of the period-baptism, discipleship, death and resurrection. These Gospel texts are in turn paired with Old Testament readings that historically have been seen as typologically related. That is to say, events in the Old Testament are seen as parallel to and signs of events in the life of Christ, just as the Old Testament itself sees the return from Exile as parallel to the Exodus. Many of these typologies go back to the second century and may even have been in the minds of the Gospel writers. The first Sunday combines Matthew’s account of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness with the Genesis account of the Fall. Jesus refuses the suggestions of the Evil One while the human couple in Eden gave in to them. The Epistle lesson from Romans 5 shows Jesus as the Second Adam. Psalm 51 stresses confession and repentance. The temptations of Jesus occur after his baptism, and baptism will not end temptations for us either. In fact, the more we try to be obedient, the more we may be aware of opposition to faithfulness. Repentance therefore is not something that is to be done once, but rather is the continuous character of the Christian life. Ash Wednesday begins the period of repentance and renewal of our baptism and therefore repentance is stressed this first Sunday. The Second Sunday pairs the passage in John 3 about a second birth and God’s desire for the salvation of all, with the call and promise to Abraham in Genesis 12. The Epistle lesson is from Romans 4, faith that inherits the promise to Abraham. The Psalm is 121 with its reminder that only the Lord is our true helper, which is the heart of faith. There is an alternative Gospel reading of Matthew 17:1-9 if the Transfiguration is celebrated on this Sunday. The rest of the readings are the same. If ever there was a “movable feast” it is the Transfiguration ! In many Protestant churches, the Transfiguration is remembered on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday. The Roman Catholic Church keeps the ancient fixed date of August 6. If the Transfiguration reading is used here, then the disciples have a glimpse of Jesus as the one who fulfills the promises to Israel. There are also words here about the resurrection of the Son of Man. The Third Sunday combines the woman at the well in John 4, which includes the words about the living water that Jesus gives, with the account in Exodus 17, where the people complain about the lack of water and receive water from the rock. The typology as it was used in the early church would understand that those who are baptized are tempted to be discouraged, even as the Israelites were discouraged in their trek across the wilderness. The Psalm for this day is 95, which mentions the time in the wilderness. We are to trust God who gives us living water through the work of Christ. The Epistle lesson from Romans 5 shows that we are justified by faith and reconciled to God through Christ. The Fourth Sunday pairs the healing of the man born blind (John 9) with Samuel’s anointing of David in I Samuel 16:1-13. The Epistle lesson is from Ephesians 5, that we are called to be children of the light, to awaken from sleep and rise from the dead.

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    Jesus anoints the eyes of the blind man and he sees. He moves from darkness to light. Samuel anoints David as the future king, even while Saul, the old king, still rules. Jesus, the Son of David, is the true king of the new age of light, even though the old world continues. We are called by our baptism (which the early church also called “illumination”) to live in the light and cease the works of darkness. Baptism marks our move from death to life, from darkness to light, from the old age to the new-not completely, but as a beginning, to be completed at our physical death. The Psalm is 23: God leads us as a shepherd through the valley of death to our dwelling with the Lord forever. The Fifth Sunday parallels Ezekiel’s vision of the Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14) with John’s account of the raising of Lazarus. The Epistle lesson is from Romans 8: the One who raised Christ from the dead also gives life to us. The resurrection is the theme of all three lessons, and yet it is a resurrection that comes only after a real death. Those who are baptized are called to die to the old in order to rise to the new life. There is no softening of the reality of death. Resurrection therefore is truly a miracle, a new creation, not something that happens as a matter of course. In all of these readings there is no hint of a natural immortality that humans possess, a part of us that lives on. Only God can call us back into life, and God does this by joining us to Christ. In baptism we join his death and his resurrection. The Psalm is 130, the cry to God out of the depths, with the call to hope in the Lord who alone can redeem us from death.

    The Sixth Sunday of Lent Before looking at the readings for Holy Week, beginning with the Sixth Sunday, something needs to be said about planning for the whole season. The preacher needs to look at the congregation’s plans for Holy Week and Easter in order to see what is the culmination, the goal, toward which the earlier Sundays should be directed. In other words, if the congregation has an Easter Eve service with the renewal of baptismal vows, if there are to be baptisms on Easter, or if the confirmation class is to be received on Palm Sunday or on Easter, these events would make a difference. Is the whole Lenten season to be geared to baptism? If there is to be no stress on baptism, is the way of the cross as the meaning of discipleship to be the emphasis? Is there a Good Friday service that most of the congregation attends, or should the Sunday before Easter stress the Passion? Is there a Maundy Thursday service and if so, how will that be related to baptism and/or discipleship? What is to be the basic thrust of the Easter Sunday sermon? How can that message tie in with what has gone before? Also, for congregations that are not accustomed to celebrations of the Lord’s Supper every Sunday, where in this last week will there be communion? Will it be on Easter Sunday? On Maundy Thursday? How does this affect the planning? Such considerations are essential especially before deciding what is to be done with the Sixth Sunday of Lent. In the lectionary there are readings either for Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday. Before the new lectionary, the fifth Sunday was listed as Passion Sunday, but that was so long before Good Friday that it seemed an intrusion. Now it is the Sixth Sunday, just as Holy Week opens. Most church members think of that as Palm Sunday only. If the congregation does not have any occasion to gather for Good Friday, or if there is no dealing with the cross on Maundy Thursday, then the Sixth Sunday must deal with the cross. Otherwise the congregation may celebrate the resurrection without any stress on the cross, and that is a serious problem. We are so

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    used to the readings for Palm Sunday on that day, even with processions and palms, that it may be difficult to change it abruptly. However, it would be possible to combine the readings so that there is an emphasis not only on the entry into Jerusalem but the events of Friday as well. The hope of the lectionary is that the whole passion narrative could be read. That may be difficult, but somehow, the congregation should not move from the entry into Jerusalem to the resurrection without a strong look at Christ’s death in between. Avoiding thinking about death is such a character of the culture that steps must be taken so that the Cross is not overlooked in a desire to have the Good News about Easter without the horror of the death that goes before. The readings for Palm Sunday include the narrative of Matthew 21:1-11 and portions of Psalm 118. No other readings are listed. For Passion Sunday, the account of the crucifixion in Matthew is used, along with portions of Isaiah 50 that refer to the suffering and vindication of one called to teach the people. The Epistle lesson is the hymn in Philippians 2:5-11, the hymn that shows the humility of Christ, who took the form of a servant and was obedient even to the cross. The Psalm is part of 31, the words of one who is surrounded by enemies and yet trusts in God. The suffering of Jesus is impossible to miss in these lessons.

    Holy Week There are lessons common to cycles A, B, and C for all of the days of Holy Week. The Gospel readings are all from John. All have to do with the words of Jesus about his coming death or narratives about his death. Excellent as the selections are, few congregations will gather for worship every day of Holy Week, and therefore sermons during the week will be unusual, until we come to Maundy Thursday. The English term “Maundy” comes from the Latin word for “command,” and refers to the text always used on this day, John 13:1-17; 31b-35. In this passage Jesus gives his disciples a new commandment, “that you love one another.” This is part of the feet-washing narrative found only in John’s Gospel. This is combined with Exodus 12:1 -4, (5-10), 11 -14, the institution of the Passover, as the Hebrews are about to leave Egypt for the Promised Land. The firstborn of the Egyptians are killed, but those who put the blood on the doorposts are saved. The Epistle lesson is I Corinthians 11:23-26, Paul’s recitation of the words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper as he had received them. It is interesting that though John’s Gospel contains a meal on this night, it is not “the Last Supper,” and it is used on Wednesday night of Holy Week because it contains the words about the betrayal. But Paul’s account supplies the institution of the Lord’s Supper. For most congregations, a Maundy Thursday service probably includes both communion and at least some mention of feet-washing. The mood is somber because it is in the shadow of the cross. There was a great change in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper beginning in the mid-twentieth century as a result of the liturgical renewal movement. The previous many centuries understood all communion services to stress the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Communion was funereal in character. Little mention was made of the resurrection. This probably remains the character of Maundy Thursday, although usually this service is in the evening and in a more informal setting, perhaps connected with a meal in the church fellowship hall. Some congregations cannot imagine having two communion services in one week-both Thursday and again on Easter-and some

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    find the combination of communion and the joyful celebration of Easter jarring, since they think of the sacrament primarily as a Good Friday remembrance. However, this is a great opportunity to show that communion is not only a Good Friday service but also, and above all, a celebration of the Risen Lord with his people at the Lord’s Table. An Easter celebration makes that possible, but only if the services of Maundy Thursday and Easter are quite different and the congregation is prepared by appropriate teaching during the Lenten period. Good Friday services vary enormously. In some congregations there is a traditional three-hour service from noon to three o’clock, centering on the Seven Last Words, each with a brief meditation. Other churches have briefer services modeled on the Sunday morning service. In the medieval church this was the one day there was no Communion because it was the remembrance of the original sacrifice from which the sacrament took its life. Some Protestant churches do have communion on Good Friday, although probably not if they just celebrated it the night before on Maundy Thursday. The lessons include the account of the Passion from John, the Suffering Servant hymn in Isaiah, Psalm 22 which includes the words of Jesus on the Cross, and a choice of two passages from Hebrews, both of which refer to the cross. Because the Maundy Thursday service is usually at night and the Good Friday service is during the day, attendance is usually far greater at the Thursday service, since an increasingly secular society makes little allowance for Good Friday. If the preacher is free to choose passages on Palm/Passion Sunday other than the lectionary ones, and if there is no Good Friday service, some of the readings for Friday could be used on the previous Sunday. Again, it is essential that the congregation have a strong emphasis on the Cross before they celebrate Easter.

    The Easter Services For the early church, the most important service of the whole year occurred late on Saturday night and into Easter morning. This gradually disappeared. As late as the 1950s, in Roman Catholic churches the remnant of the Saturday part of this service was usually held on Saturday morning, with no congregation, and the sole purpose was to provide holy water—especially for baptisms for the rest of the year. Vatican II changed this, requiring that the service be restored to its position on Saturday night, leading into the first Easter mass. Many Protestant churches have also developed Easter Vigil services, based on the early celebrations we know from the second through the fifth centuries. The concept of a vigil is based on the Jewish understanding of a day. The day begins at sundown, not at midnight. (Obviously, in a time before clocks, midnight would have been a totally artificial boundary.) Therefore, the Easter service begins on Saturday night and moves into Sunday. There is a service for Saturday listed in the lectionary that is not an Easter service, for congregations that wish to have worship but not an Easter service. This alternative continues the narrative of the passion, reading about the burial. The joy of the resurrection is left for the Sunday morning service. The Easter Vigil assumes that there is a tie between Jesus’ death and resurrection, the Exodus from Egypt, and our own baptism. In all three cases there is a dramatic action by God, beyond all human possibility, leading from an old life to a new one. The old enemies are defeated and life can now begin to be lived in a freedom not possible before. In the Exodus, bondage in Egypt ended when Moses led the people through the

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    water. At the cross, Jesus takes on the enemies—sin, death, and the power of evil. In the resurrection, his victory over all of these is shown. In baptism, we move from the old life in which sin, death, and evil held sway to a new life lived free from the power of these ancient foes. The transition is not complete, but a beginning has been made. Just as Israel had to learn much in the wilderness before entering the Promised Land, so we also are learning to live this new life while still living in the old world. It is only by faith that we know the truth of what has happened. Easter is not a message that there is life after death, as though that was unheard of before Jesus. The Pharisees believed there would be a resurrection at the end of the age. The Greeks and others held to various understandings of an immortality that at least some humans already possessed. The Gospel agrees with the Pharisees that there is a resurrection at the end of the age, but then proclaims that the resurrection of Jesus is the dawning of the Kingdom, the Reign of God breaking into our old world. The lessons for the Easter Vigil stress all of these things, bringing in images of water from creation on. Most baptisms were held at this service, so that the meaning was clear that in baptism we die with Christ in order to rise also with him-not simply after our physical death, but even now, with his risen life, we are enabled to begin living in the new age. Since most Christians are no longer baptized on Easter Eve, a ceremony of the renewal of the congregation’s baptismal vows traditionally occurs here. It includes the renunciation of the powers of darkness and a turning to the light of Christ. If the whole Lenten period has stressed the meaning of our baptism and its relationship to Christ’s death and resurrection, then the renewal of baptismal vows can be a very important part of the Easter celebration. The Gospel reading for the Easter Vigil service as well as the Easter morning service is Matthew 28:1-10, the account of the resurrection and Jesus’ appearance to the women. On Sunday morning it is paired with a passage from Colossians that calls us to live as those who have been raised with Christ. If communion is celebrated on Sunday morning or immediately after the Vigil, then clearly it cannot be a stress on the cross but rather the resurrection as a victory over the cross. Finally, if there is a communion service on Sunday evening, the Emmaus Road passage from Luke 24 is used. It is the risen Lord who is made known to the disciples in the breaking of bread.

    Conclusion The preacher, perhaps along with a worship committee, needs to do coherent planning for the entire season from Ash Wednesday through Easter. If there are to be several communion services, thought should be given to how they will each relate to the particular part of the season. If there are to be baptisms or confirmations, these also need to be placed where they help illumine the season. Finally, the movement from death to new life needs to be made crystal clear. Dedication to living in the new age made possible by Christ’s resurrection is the culmination of the season. There can be no such new life without the concomitant dying to the old. How the congregation as a whole makes this movement is the goal of the planning.

  • The war in Iraq: the Latin American churches speak out

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    The War in Iraq:

    The Latin American Churches Speak Out*

    C. René Padilla and Lindy Scott Kairos Foundation, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois

    So in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. (Romans 12:5)

    And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. (I Corinthians 12:26)

    The invasion of Iraq in March 2003 by the armed forces of the United States, Great Britain, and a few allies provoked a great polarization in our world. The overwhelming majority of demonstrations outside the United States were protests against the war. Although there were large protests within the United States as well, surveys revealed that leading up to the invasion North Americans were fairly evenly divided, in favor and against the war. Once the bombs began to fall, the percentage of North Americans who supported the war rose to 70% or even higher. This chapter narrates how various Protestant churches and organizations in Latin America responded to this war. As a backdrop it should be mentioned that some denominations in the United States (mostly “mainline” denominations and the Roman Catholic Church) officially came out against the war. But at the level of the “person in the pew,” patriotic support for “the President and our troops” was quite strong. Support from the “evangelical” wing of United States Protestantism was even higher, probably above 80%.

    Latin American Protestants and the War How did Protestants in Latin America respond? Three major options seemed possible. The first option presupposed that, given the historical relationship between Latin American Protestants and their counterparts (missionaries, literature, funding, etc.) in the United States, it would seem plausible that Latin American Protestants would support the war. Perhaps even more likely was the possibility that the Latin American churches would remain silent on the issue, typical of their apolitical posture throughout most of the twentieth century.1 Lastly, given the fact that Latin Americans in general were quite against the war, it was possible that the Latin American churches would also take a public stand against the war. This third option is, indeed, the one that was chosen. What is surprising is that the overwhelming majority of Latin American churches that took a public position regarding the war strongly denounced it, and they based their denunciations primarily

    * Reprinted from Terrorism and the War in Iraq: A Christian Word From Latin America (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Kairos, 2004), 11-26, with permission of the authors.

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    on moral grounds. Most critiques of the war dealt with the first four criteria of the Just War theory.2 Although there is a long tradition of pacifism within the history of Christianity, the more dominant position, especially since Constantine, has been the theory of the Just War. According to this theory, although all Christians are called to be peacemakers, in a few circumstances it might be necessary to use limited warfare to avoid greater bloodshed. Nevertheless, Christians should not participate in wars unless all seven criteria of the Just War theory have been fulfilled. These criteria are (1) just cause; (2) just intention; (3) last resort; (4) formal declaration; (5) limited objectives; (6) proportionate means; (7) noncombatant immunity.3 It could be anticipated that the churches affiliated with the Consejo Latinoamericano de Iglesias (an association of churches in Latin America with ties to the World Council of Churches) would denounce the war, because in the past it has criticized the foreign policies of the United States. Nevertheless, it was not so readily expected that conservative churches and “apolitical” churches would do the same. The examples that follow are merely a sample of their pronouncements. The Executive National Committee of the Unión Evangélica Pentecostal Venezolana (Venezuelan Evangelical Pentecostal Union) sent a pastoral letter to all of their member churches expressing their “rejection of the war that is currently being waged in Iraq and of the world war project that the great centers of world power are orchestrating.”4 Consequently the pentecostal leaders “urge the governments of the United States, England and Spain to heed the voices that are raised everywhere in opposition to the war, because it does not guarantee the well-being nor the security of any person or nation.”5 The Executive Committee of the Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana (Latin American Theological Fraternity) strongly denounced the war and declared it to be “illegal, immoral and inhumane.”6 The declaration accused the United States and Great Britain of having supported the despot Saddam Hussein for decades and now waging war against him in an invasion that attempted to hide their economic interests. The true motives of the war were connected to a similar penetration in Latin America such as the Plan Pueblo-Panamá, the Plan Colombia and the ACLA. In addition to all the immoralities of the war, it would also have negative effects on evangelism, because “the havoc wreaked by two ‘Christian’ nations would invalidate the proclamation of the gospel in cultures whose voices and contributions we have not yet listened to nor appreciated.”7 One of the most surprising denunciations of the war came from the Baptist World Alliance. While some prominent Baptists in the United States came out in support of the war, the Baptist World Alliance with strong influence from its Latin American members condemned the invasion as “a great sin.” In the capital, Washington D.C., the Alliance declared that “war is always a failure of humanity to achieve the will of God for peace.”8 The Red Latinoamericana de Abogados Cristanos (RLAC, Latin American Network of Christian Lawyers), consisting of more than 100 legal professionals from 14 Latin American countries, expressed “their most profound rejection of this illegitimate military intervention.”9 As could be expected, this legal association protested the violations of international law and against its democratic foundations. They denounced the hypocrisy of the Bush administration for “the way that the North

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    American government has manipulated democratic values and, under the guise of democracy, it would sacrifice innocent Iraqi men, women, and children, in the quest of economic and geopolitical interests.”10 They accused the United States of a moral “double standard” by attacking a nation without following the appropriate channels established by the Magna Carta of the United Nations. The Foro Ecuménico por la Paz y la Reconciliación (Ecumenical Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, Guatemala) groups together the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Guatemalan Lutheran, and Cristo Rey Lutheran Protestant Churches, the Conference of Guatemalan Evangelical Churches {Conferencia de Iglesias Evangélicas de Guatemala or CIEDEG in addition to the Ecumenical and Theological Commission of the Roman Catholic Bishops Conference {La Comisión de Ecumenismo y Teología de la Conferencia Episcopal), the Conference of Religious Orders and the Orthodox Church Community. This Ecumenical Forum denounced the United States’ invasion of Iraq and unmasked the motivations used to justify the war. “Wars are unnecessary and do not coincide with the ethical and moral values of our societies; only those cultures and people that promote relationships of unequal, asymmetrical power, competition, mistrust, fears, frustrations, and threats justify wars in order to maintain their position.”11 The pronouncement alluded to the passages in the Old Testament where “God is our reason for hope, as the strength of life and guarantee of peace for the future of men and women.” People must therefore reject the use of armed conflict. The document urged the Guatemalan people to “express themselves in favor of peace and to commit themselves to never lose sight of the Guatemalan peace process.”12 On March 30 the Evangelical Conference carried out a liturgical ceremony that brought together leaders and members of the Mennonite, Kaqchikel Presbyterian, Catholic, Pentecostal, Central American, and Orthodox churches, in which David Son, Executive Secretary of the CIEDEG, extended an exhortation to Bush and Blair to reconsider their actions: “The powerful act out of evil when they fuel war. We hope that those who push a button to destroy might have a moment of reflection about the impact of their actions that cut short human life.”13 The Universidad Politécnica de Nicaragua {UPOLI, the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua) is sponsored by the Baptist Church in Nicaragua. During the first days of April 2003, students from the university presented an exhibition showing the effects of the missiles and bombs that were falling upon Iraq. Titled “When the Powerful Believe Themselves to be Gods,” the exposition denounced the war unleashed by the governments of the United States and England and the suffering caused to children, to the hungry, to the disinherited and to those who were being used as human shields. Maria del Socorro Rodriguez, professor of the University, stated, “The war against Iraq violates international law. I do not want to be an accomplice, by my silence, to an action that undermines the foundations of world peace.”14 The Palestinian ambassador to Nicaragua, George Salama, addressed the students and discredited Bush’s argument regarding the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed. The diplomat affirmed, “Saddam Hussein is not a danger for international security nor for peace, because he does not possess chemical nor biological weapons, nor relations with terrorist organizations.”15 He affirmed that the true motivation for the invasion was oil and the concomitant control of the Middle East. Hundreds of university students and professors responded to the exhibition with fasting and prayer vigils on behalf of world peace.

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    The Latin American and Caribbean Pre-Assembly of the World Lutheran Federation met in San Salvador, El Salvador, during April 6-9, 2003. Delegates took advantage of their meeting to pronounce a prophetic word regarding the war. In the inaugural address, Brazilian theologian Walter Altmann connected his comments on the war with the general theme of the assembly: “The holistic healing of the world.” He affirmed that “with much fewer resources than those spent in the war we could solve problems like world hunger and other acute needs…the war will have an extremely high human and social cost, not only in civilian deaths, especially children, but also due to the destruction of basic resources for the survival of the people.”16 His predictions are sadly coming true.17 Altmann foresaw tragic consequences for the relations between religions, particularly between Islam and Christianity, because “Bush (just like Saddam Hussein) insists on invoking the blessing of God upon his bellicose action.” In the same assembly, Ismael Noko, the General Secretary of the World Lutheran Federation, repeated a condemnation of the war as unjustifiable for having violated international and ethical norms. Noko, with eerie accuracy, predicted that “the United States and Great Britain will win the war, but will lose the peace” and “with this attack the anti-U.S. sentiment will deepen throughout the world and will provoke greater tensions between Christian and Muslim communities.”18 On April 10, Federico Pagura, Bishop Emeritus of the Argentine Methodist Church, denounced the war of the United States and its allies against Iraq and called it a “genocidal invasion” against the Iraqi people. He condemned the hypocrisy of the United States for having initiated aggression “with the pretext of overthrowing Saddam Hussein who, like other dictators around the world, has been created and/or maintained by administrations of the same imperial colossus of the North. “19 Pagura identified the United States as “the number one terrorist power on earth.” He joined other Latin American evangelical leaders (such as the ex-president of the Universidad Bíblica Latinoamericana in Costa Rica, Elsa Támez) in his commitment to not traveling to the United States as a personal protest.

    Mexico Mexican Protestants also announced their repudiation of the war. A wide spectrum of seminaries, including the Anglicans, the Baptists, the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Presbyterians and the influential Comunidad Teológica de México, plus the Berea, Elim and Anabaptist Bible Institutes, came together to publish a joint declaration in which they affirmed, “we join our voice to the official voice of various Christian entities throughout the world and in Mexico that have declared to be against the war” and “we declare ourselves to be against the official posture of the governments of the United States, Great Britain and Spain who in the name of God are invading Iraq.”20 They later insinuated that Bush and his allies practice idolatry because they serve another god. “This is not the God that we know. The One that we know is the God of history and therefore, the One that demands justice, peace and love. This is the God that is revealed in Jesus Christ, who opens opportunities for life, for inclusiveness, and for solidarity. It is the God who calls us to be the peacemakers in the construction of a new earth.”21 One of the most surprising declarations came from the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico (INPM). In their official magazine, El Faro, the Presbyterians condemned the war against Iraq in no uncertain terms. The title itself “La Iglesia

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    Nacional Presbiteriana de México se une a la Alianza Reformada de Iglesias y condena la guerra contra Irak” (The National Presbyterian Church of Mexico joins with the Alliance of Reformed Churches to Condemn the War against Iraq) expressed their passionate cry against the war.22 The declaration begins with “profound sadness and sorrow” because “the force of international opinion was not able in the last instance to dissuade the government of the United States and the few allies that followed it from launching a war that will bring about suffering, misery, and death for thousands of Iraqis and perhaps many other people from other places.”23 The article denounces this war begun without the authorization of the United Nations as “immoral and illegal. And utilizing a term that is traditional to us, it is a sin.”24 Therefore, “we Presbyterians categorically condemn the war for the unilateral and imperialistic mentality upon which it is based. No nation, however powerful it may be, can act upon the world scene just as it wishes.”25 The article later refers to President Bush. It alludes to his affirmation that the people of the world have to be in favor of ox against the United States. “A unipolar world, in which a superpower offers us the option of being with it or against it is an unacceptable world from a moral and political point of view. President Bush and his administration need to remember that the evangelical option is to be in favor of or against Christ.”26 Bush’ s affirmation came so close to blasphemy that many Latin American Christians identified the United States’ connection between faith and patriotism as “Yankee syncretism.” Later, the article criticizes the government of the United States for utilizing antidemocratic methods in the United Nations. “We congratulate the majority of the countries represented on the United Nations Security Council and especially our country for not allowing themselves to be hounded, bribed, or intimidated to the point of supporting the war. We call upon the General Assembly of the United Nations to discuss at the earliest possible moment this reckless affront to international law.”27 The article ends with various exhortations: one to the people of the world and to their governments to “reaffirm the authority of the United Nations.” The second exhortation is addressed to the aggressor states, demanding that “they immediately stop their attacks.” The final exhortation is for the church to “pray and make its voices of protest heard,” This declaration of the Mexican Presbyterian Church is surprising due to the denomination’s own history in the political realm. In its beginnings, The Presbyterian Church had been quite active in Mexican politics. Nevertheless, beginning in the 1930s the Presbyterians entered into a period in which they strove to become “apolitical.”28 In Mexico, the Presbyterians are known as one of the most conservative denominations, especially with regard to socio-political issues. In 1972 the denomination broke off official ties with the Presbyterians in the United States because they were “too liberal.” More recently, Mexican Presbyterians have strengthened connections with the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA), one of the more conservative denominations in the United States. This declaration of the Mexican Presbyterians went against the sentiments of many of their fellow Presbyterians in the United States.

    Later Events In recent months several churches have continued their pronouncements regarding the situation in Iraq. In the first days of September 2003, the Salvadoran Lutheran

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    Synod made a declaration against the sending of Salvadoran troops to participate with the occupation forces in Iraq. The situation in Iraq is “extremely dangerous” for the 380 Salvadoran soldiers who are located there.29 Their declaration made reference to the fact that El Salvador, as a member of the United Nations and as a signer of the Chapultepec Peace Accords (1992), committed itself to work for peace and reconciliation . Having intimately known war, our people “reject war.” Bishop Medardo Gomez asked for the annulment of the legislative decree that authorized the sending of troops to Iraq. He argued that it was illegal because El Salvador had not declared war upon Iraq. In September of 2003, the Micah Network brought together 185 evangelical leaders from more than 50 countries in Queretaro, Mexico, to discuss the theme of globalization from a Christian perspective. Although the war in Iraq was not part of the original schedule, the delegates recognized the necessity to deal with it. The final declaration expressed that the International Court must be strengthened so that it could better judge cases of international wars. It demanded that the United Nations be supported with greater finances so that it would be able to better carry out its functions. It also denounced the use of “terrorism” as a pretext for wars, when 30,000 persons die every day due to hunger and illnesses.30 Church leaders in Ecuador31 and Argentina have publicly stated that the presence of certain evangelical leaders from the United States would be counterproductive to the proclamation of the gospel in their countries. The clearest example has to do with evangelist Franklin Graham (son of famous evangelist Billy Graham). The younger Graham was scheduled to give evangelistic messages in Rosaio, Argentina, in November 2003, at the “Festival of Hope.” The Kairos Community, with the support of the Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana (Buenos Aires chapter), wrote that the participation of Graham in the evangelical event constituted an “ethical problem of great magnitude, if we keep in mind that Franklin Graham is a religious advisor to George W. Bush, and is frankly offensive, among other reasons, for the explicit support that the preacher gave to the invasion of Iraq by the United States.”32 The Argentine document continued: “While almost the entire world, including many Argentine men and women, perceive the bellicose actions of the governments of George Bush and Tony Blair as a criminal act, how can we Argentine evangelicals give a welcome to someone who has contributed to the utilization of our faith to justify such an act?”33

    Observations It has been a surprise to many observers to see the unanimity of these pronouncements . Every single one condemned the war as immoral. We are not aware of any denomination in Latin America that came out in favor of the war. An article in one Pentecostal magazine did see the war as fitting into God ‘ s eschatological plan, but even this article did not favor the war. Although Protestant churches, especially the ones that made the declarations, are historically democratic, in general it was their leaders who denounced the war in the name of (and not necessarily consulting with) their members. Perhaps this is the rise oí “profeta evangélico” (evangelical prophet) or “cacique religioso (religious chief).” It is to be expected that Latin American Protestant leaders will make more of these types of pronouncements in the future.

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    These Latin American churches, at least in symbolic ways, are further severing the umbilical cord with the churches in the United States. Many evangelical leaders in Latin America have rejected the priorities of churches in the North.34 It is likely that the Latin American churches will distance themselves even further from their “spiritual parents” in the north. Many of the denominations and organizations made declarations that aligned with the posture of their own international ecclesiastical body, for example the World Baptist Alliance, the World Lutheran Federation or the Alliance of Reformed Churches. Many of their critiques pointed out how the United States did not follow the appropriate channels laid out by the United Nations and “went it alone.” These denominations were careful not to commit the same mistake, because they frequently connected their pronouncements with those of their international associations. In general, the Latin American evangelical protests lined up with the posture of their own national governments and the sentiments of their own people. It is possible to interpret these denunciations as the Latin American expression of “evangelical patriotism.” Nevertheless, there are indications of rising prophetic voices that do challenge the position of national governments (for example, the Lutherans in El Salvador). When church pronouncements and national positions do coincide, a good dose of suspicion is in order. Nevertheless, the essential issue is the content of the argument raised, not its agreement (nor disagreement) with the national position. These denunciations might very well be valid and helpful observations from another perspective. The invasion of Iraq by the United States and England has raised great interest again in political ethics and the role of churches in modern societies. Latin American churches have begun making their voices heard. Their articulate pronouncements are making a contribution to the ethical debate needed in our contemporary world.

    Notes

    1. For a good overall view of this “apolitical” stance see C. René Padilla, ed., De la marginación al compromiso: Los evangélicos y la política en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Fraternidad Teologica Latinoamericana, 1991. For a more detailed study of this posture in Mexico see Scott, Salt of the Earth: A Socio-political History of Mexico City Evangelical Protestants (1964-1991). Mexico City: Editorial Kyrios, 1991. 2. The second chapter of this book analyzes in greater detail the war in Iraq in the light of Just War criteria. 3. These criteria have been clearly articulated by Arthur Holmes in Robert G. Clouse, ed., War: Four Christian Views. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1981, pp. 117-135. 4. “Iglesias pentecostales rechazan la guerra y llaman a participar en los cambios del país” in Servicio de Noticias ALO. March 25, 2003. 5. Ibid. 6. President Lilia Solano Góngora, “Comunicado de la Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana sobre la guerra.” Fraternidad Teologica Latinoamericana: March 24, 2003. 7. Ibid. 8. “Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana y Alianza Bautista Mundial rechazan la guerra” en Servicio de Noticias ALO. March 25, 2003. 9. “Abogados cristanos condenan la guerra en Irak” in Servicio de Noticias ALC: March 26, 2003. 10. Ibid. 11. Antonio Otzoy, “Foro Ecuménico se suma a clamor mundial y pide cese de ataque a Irak” in Servicio de Noticias ALC: April 4, 2003 (emphasis mine). 12. Ibid.

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    13. Ibid. 14. Trinidad Vásquez. “Universitarios presentan exposición ‘Cuando los ponderosos se creen dioses’” in Servicio de Noticias ALC: April 4, 2003. 15. Ibid. 16. “Walter Altmann pronunció discurso inaugural de pre-asamblea luterana” in Servicio de Noticias ALC: April 6, 2003. 17. The accuracy of his prediction is seen in the cost of the war in Iraq and the following reconstruction. It has risen to $166,000,000,000.00 during the first 16 months and it continues to rise. 18. “El secretario general de la Federación Luterana reafirma rechazo a guerra contra Irak” in Servicio de Noticias ALC: April 7, 2003. 19. “Obispo Pagura adhiere a las protestas contra la guerra en Irak” in Servicio de Noticias ALC: April 10, 2003 (emphasis mine). 20. “Evangélicos de México, Argentina y Perú también están por la paz’ in Servicio de Noticias ALC: April 2, 2003. 21. Ibid. 22. President Jorge Lopez Pérez, “La Iglesia Nacional Presbiteriana de México se une a la Alianza Reformada de Iglesias y condena la Guerra contra Irak” in El Faro (May-June 2003): 35 (original emphasis). 23.Ibid. 24. Ibid (emphasis mine). 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid (emphasis mine). 27. Ibid (emphasis mine). 28. See the chapter on the National Presbyterian Church of Mexico in Scott, Salt of the Earth, pp. 49-76. 29. “Luteranos contra el envío de tropas salvadoreñas a Irak” in Servicio de Noticias ALC: September 1.2003. 30. “La Declaración de Querétaro: La Globalización y los Pobres,” Querétaro: Red Miqueas (Micah Network), 2003. 31. The Ecuadorian response can be found at http://www.protestantedigital.com/hemeroteca/006/ index.htm 32. “Fundación Evangélica Kairos rechaza presentación del predicador Franklin Graham” in Servicio de Noticias ALC: November 4, 2003. 33. Ibid. 34. It is illuminating to see the critique of the North American churches by Brazilian Assembly of God pastor Ricardo Gondim in “Pastor cuestiona la importación de modelos evangélicos” in Servicios de Noticias ALC: November 1,2002. It is important to point out that Gondim had studied in the United States but now rejects what he considers to be non-Biblical alliances that United States evangelicals have formed. His critique included the following: ”North American evangelicals sympathize with the Republican Party, venerate their president and believe that the future of their country is tied to prayer in school, prohibition of abortion, and the denunciation of homosexuality…they are not very interested in the emission of toxic gases into the atmosphere, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, or the inequality of commercial relations with the poor countries of our planet.” Gondim continued his cri tuque of Protestant preaching in the United States: “You never hear from the North American pulpits any denunciation of the tariffs on imports or subsidies of their agricultural products that affect economies of poor nations. The ‘American way of life’ and the gospel are Siamese twins. It is almost impossible to separate them.”

  • A myriad of ‘truth and reconciliation’ commissions

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    Λ Myriad of “Truth and Reconciliation”

    Commissions

    Walter Brueggemann

    Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia

    We are, it is confessed among us, saved by grace: delivered by God’s good power from the power of evil; rescued by God’s generosity from the destructiveness of our own sin. Most of us, schooled in Paul, will readily affirm that that rescue and deliverance are all God’s work, not ours:

    We may be surprised, however, to find in Paul’s letters virtually no use of certain words we often employ in connection with righting what is wrong. When he speaks to human beings of their wickedness, should he not call on them to repent! And should he not say that, after repenting, they can be assured of the peace and Tightness that comes with forgiveness! Yet, in all of his references to the righting of what has gone wrong, Paul makes no significant reference to repentance and forgiveness. 1

    The gift of new life is fully accomplished by God and so the themes of repentance and forgiveness leave little to be said. Of course…except that the reception of the free gift from God is not easy, and the truth of that grace is not cheap. For that reason, every pastor knows that there are disciplines that belong to the reception of God’s grace, tasks inescapably entailed in the reality of forgiveness.

    I. For the most part, it is not true, as the Psalmist says,

    Against you, you alone have I sinned, and done what was evil in your sight. (Ps 51:4)

    It was not true even for David who recited—according to the superscription—this Psalm; he had sinned against God to be sure, but also against Uriah and Bathsheba (2 Sam 12:9). Characteristically our distorted lives violate our relationship both with God and with neighbor. That is why, along with the “first commandment” there is always a “second like unto it” (Mark 12:29-31). As violation of Torah characteristically involves both God and neighbor, so the work of forgiveness relates both to God and neighbor. I take it that this double fruit of sin and the commensurate double task of receiving forgiveness were in Jesus’ purview in his teaching in the Sermon on the Mount:

    So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. (Matt 5:23-24)

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    A “gift at the altar” might indeed be a fresh approach to God, an acknowledgement of God’s rule, an articulation of gratitude for right or restored relationship with God. One cannot come to such a gift-giving enterprise with God, however, until there is reconciliation with the neighbor who has a grievance. In the teaching of Jesus the term “reconcile” is left uninflected. We may take it to mean, whether by word or by act, to right a wrong. Such a righting of a wrong clears the way to continue the journey to the altar for gift-giving to God as an act of acknowledgement, an articulation of gratitude, and restoration ofthat relationship that has been breached. The journey interrupted by neighbor reality, when completed, leaves one in the position to love God and to love neighbor afresh. There is no question in the teaching of Jesus any more than in the theology of Paul that the gift brought to the altar will be accepted. The path to that wondrous enactment of gift, however, is via reconciliation with the neighbor.

    II. It is plausible—I would think probable—that the teaching of Jesus cited above is rooted in the priestly instruction of Leviticus 6:1-7 (Heb 5:20-26). That priestly teaching, amid general and detailed instructions about sacrifices, provides guidance in the priestly horizon to the path to reconciliation. The beginning of the teaching is noteworthy:

    When any of you sin and commit a transgression against the Lord…

    Here is a distortion against God that causes a skewed relationship with God. But the text promptly continues:

    …by deceiving…(vv. 2-3)

    The connection between transgression against God and deceiving a neighbor is by a single wow consecutive, the second filling out the substance of the first. Distorted relationship with God is accomplished by distorted relationship with neighbor. The affront against the neighbor…that constitutes a trespass against YHWH…is a matter of economics: deposit…pledge…robbery…fraud…or something lost and found and lied about. Sins against neighbor that constitute transgression against God are not emotive or private or romantic matters. They concern, first of all, hard-nosed materialism about economic transactions of a systemic kind that block communion with God. The sin is thus double-edged…surprise, surprise L.God and neighbor! Notice, moreover, that the sin is not twofold. It is one act that affronts both God and neighbor. Given such an analysis of sin, it will not surprise us that the antidote to such sin is also double-edged and requires the completion of two tasks in turn, the same two tasks identified by Jesus in his teaching on reconciliation. The first task, according to Leviticus 6:4-5, is a full acknowledgement of what has been done against the neighbor, the capacity to recognize violation of the neighbor for what it is, and a resolve to overcome that violation:

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    When you have sinned and realize your guilt, and would restore what you took by robbery or by fraud or the deposit that was committed to you, or the lost thing that you found, or anything else about which you have sworn falsely. (Lev 6:4-5a)

    The agenda of reconciliation matches the detail of the affront given in verses 2-3: robbery…fraud…deposit…lost thing. The operational words are “would restore.” The verb “restore” means to return to the owner what is rightly the property of the owner that has been inappropriately taken. Hebrew lacks any subjunctive mood that would yield “would,” but the translation reflects the resolve to do what is still at the moment contrary to fact. Thus the recognition may evoke an intention to intervene in order to change the situation. The subjunctive of recognition is voiced in verses 4-5a. Then comes the imperative of action:

    You shall repay the principal amount. You shall add one-fifth to it. You shall pay it to its owner, when you realize your guilt, (v. 5b)

    The required action is expressed in three verbs. The first, “repay,” is shalem, a regular form for retribution that is linked to the familiar noun shalom, thus shalommaking . The second verb “add” concerns a requirement, perhaps afine, whereby more is given back to the neighbor than has been taken from the neighbor. The measure of twenty percent in addition is a standard one that is required in a series of practices related to redemption (see Lev 5:16; 27:13,15,27,31 ; Num 5:7; in Gen 47:24 it is the measure of rent paid to Pharaoh by sharecroppers.) The twenty percent is clearly a significant amount of cash for an economic transaction added to the principal, in our case no doubt to underscore the gravity of the affront, no doubt a significant amount to dramatize in a face-to-face culture a visible gesture indicating serious reparation that entails both economic cost and social face. The payment is a clear, public announcement of a violation, an intentional act to move beyond the violation. In a word, this is an act of reparation that constitutes the first step in reconciliation. It is, however, of immense importance that this pivotal text on overcoming sin does not stop with neighborly reparations. If the sin were only against the neighbor, reparations might suffice. But the affront is, “When you sin and commit a trespass against the Lord.’9 Thus after reparation toward the neighbor, there remains the affront against YHWH that is constituted through the economic violation of the neighbor. For this, more is required, more that can be affected only through the priest:

    And you shall bring to the priest, as your guilt offering to the Lord, a ram without blemish from the flock, or its equivalent, for a guilt offering. The priest shall make atonement on your behalf before the Lord, and you shall be forgiven for any of the things that one may do and incur guilt thereby. (Lev 6:6-7)

    The offering to be given is a “ram without blemish” or an equivalent, an animal of immense value in an agricultural economy. Such an animal is the best, the most

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    expensive that can be offered. This particular priestly manual skips over the detail of slaughter and sacrifice, and characteristically offers no interpretation of the meaning of the act concerning how or why the offering of an animal accomplishes reconciliation . The priests seem committed to the proposition that the act—without any “theory of atonement”—accomplishes what must be accomplished in the broken relationship within the fractured relationship with YHWH. Thus the conclusion in verse 7 is that the priest “makes atonement,” that is, accomplishes reconciliation. The outcome is forgiveness. The point that strikes me as important is that the priest effects the reconciliation, something the penitent cannot do for himself/herself. I judge that the priest is essential because the transaction is essentially a sacramental one that depends upon a credible, sustainable communal world of symbolization in which the guilty party is willing to participate by offering a costly contribution that becomes a vehicle and sign of moving past the affront against YHWH.

    III. I suggest that we can learn something important by considering an interface between the two texts in Matthew 5:23-24 and Leviticus 6:1-7. The priestly construction of Leviticus 6:1-7 consists in two actions, a neighborly reparation and a sacramental submission to the mystery of divine forgiveness. Both acts in turn are expensive, first repayment plus twenty percent to the neighbor and then a flawless ram, a male animal upon which the future of the flock depends. The teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5:23-24 does not correlate precisely with the text of Leviticus, even though it is clearly reminiscent of it. In the Matthew text the circumstance, not unlike that of Leviticus 6:2-3, is one of alienation when “your brother or sister has something against you,” that is, the brother or sister has been affronted. The cause of alienation is not as specific here, but the critical remedy is parallel: First be reconciled to your brother or sister. The verb “be reconciled” is not inflected or exposited at all, but one may imagine that the act of reconciliation requires a substantive gesture of some kind, perhaps a verbal sign of apology and/or abasement, or perhaps a more substantive gesture commensurate with the substantive nature of the affront. One may imagine that the requirement constitutes something of a serious act of submission to the wronged brother or sister, more than a generic gesture found adequate in therapeutic society. Of course one must conclude that the act is one of reparation that is indispensable for reconciliation. With that act completed, one may approach the altar with a gift. To be sure, this teaching of Jesus is not directly about “atonement” nor is the gift identified as a “guilt offering.” Only two things are clear. First, the reconciliation remains incomplete without an approach to the altar, suggesting that more is entailed in forgiveness than simply a transaction with the neighbor. And second, an approach to the altar is not empty-handed, but with a gift that signifies a personal, serious engagement in approach to the place of Presence. It takes no stretch of imagination to see that in this teaching, like that of Leviticus, two acts are required in sequence, neighborly reparation and sacramental submission, both requirements entailing giving something of self away in acts of divestment and gestures of vulnerability.

    IV. It is worth noting that neither text offers any theory of atonement or any

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    explanation about how restoration of relationship is accomplished. Nor does the text tell against a theology of unconditional grace, for it is an act of grace that God has provided these means for restoration, the means of the altar and its sacramental capacity and, derivatively, the means of the text that guides, also a gift of grace. The altar and text, sacrament and word, are both gifts of God for the completion of the tasks of the reception of God’s forgiveness. Grace offered by sacramental and textual means must be actively received, in both cases by costly gestures toward God and toward neighbor. By focus upon the two steps in both texts {reparation and sacramental submission), it occurs to me that this twofold requirement correlates with the work of the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” in South Africa. However that title for the commission came about, the phrasing is a mouthful of evangelical theology. The phrase recognizes a two-step process of reconciliation and understands how it is that the two steps are in sequence. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of course is easily criticized for being inadequate in many ways. It is to be recognized, nonetheless, that its enactment was in an arena of remembered violence and a bottomless deposit of present alienation of a most powerful kind. The task of the commission concerns the revivification of society in the midst of a real life-and-death struggle…nothing pretty. The first step in such reconciliation is truth. The truth must be told about a violation of neighbor, and every “violation” perforce participates in violence. The truth must be told about violence perpetrated by one neighbor against another. In Leviticus 6, the violence is economic; in Matthew 5, the affront is unnamed, simply “something against you.” The violence must be named and owned; gestures of compensation, remorse, and reconciliation for an alternative must be articulated, perhaps verbally, perhaps concretely in monetary terms. The overcoming of alienation is not cheap or easy, but requires truth-telling whereby the offender is placed at the behest of the offended in some concrete way. Only when truth is told, can approach be made to the altar of atonement, that is, to the place of reconciliation. Reconciliation is finally not in the hands of the neighbor. It is in the hands of the priest (explicitly in Lev 6, surely implied in the “altar” of Matt 5), the one charged with nurturing and practicing the most elemental signs of holiness to which the community attests. The priest in both cases, on behalf of the present holy but unseen God, receives the gift, something of value. Of course in such a transaction there are risks of bribery and reciprocity and even Anselm’s notion of “satisfaction.” The gift must nonetheless be offered as a gesture of submission, divestment, and vulnerability, the ceding over of one’s life to the mysterious worship of God’s holiness. In sacramental awareness, we do indeed leave the altar differently, for the altar constitutes an arena for the transaction of “trans-substantiation” that is better left unexplained because more happens than can be explained.

    V. As I thought about these two texts, the condition of our society, and the pastoral office, it occurred to me that we live in a social context where guilt and therefore forgiveness have been trivialized to be irrelevant, whether it is a matter of rote repetition of “confession and assurance” or whether it is a mumbled whisper of embarrassment.

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    We live in a society that is deeply alienated; but we also live where the church and its pastors have entrusted to it the awesome, grace-given vehicles of restoration. The recovery of pastoral practices of reconciliation might include the two steps outlined by the priests that are echoed by Jesus: 1. Truth-telling reparation toward affronted neighbor, a truth-telling that might be concerned with large, public alienations or it might be so concrete as alienations within families or congregation. The church may indeed be the arena for truth-telling that does not grovel in guilt but that readily undertakes the first step in reconciliation. 2. Sacramental reconciliation that requires a priestly enactment of divine reception of costly self-submission and a verdict that the gift is adequate…made adequate by the gracious God who receives. On this latter point, I have pondered pastoral authority. I am of course aware of the abusive misfortune of the old priestly notion of “absolution” that is an affront to evangelical Christians. That old priestly practice smacked of authoritarianism and a hint of two-tiered notion of church, of first-rate priests and second-rate laity. In the place ofthat practice, however, we have largely forfeited the priestly performative act of reconciliation which, I have no doubt, requires a formal priestly utterance done with gravitas commensurate to our ocean of alienation and appropriate of the new life that is born in, with, and under priestly utterance. A general good feeling or a therapeutic affirmation is no adequate substitute for a priestly performative verdict about the willingness of God to receive our submitted, divested, vulnerable selves.

    VI. The dramatic capacity of the church and its pastors in this regard is an astonishing, wondrous counterforce to the world of alienation that is all around us. There is, moreover, no other way to have the vicious cycles broken, and therefore we endlessly repeat the patterns of alienation that inevitably culminate in deathliness. My son John teaches in a fairly typical college social science department. He has observed overtime that in every departmental meeting in his work, all the old hurts and alienations are endlessly reiterated over and over among colleagues. (I myself have seen traces of such faculty transactions in a somewhat different venue.) John, no mean theologian, observed: “The endless reiteration of such pain is because none of the colleagues are believers. Consequently, they have no way to break the cycles of anger.” What an insight so pertinent to our society! Entertain that the church has entrusted to it by God the means of grace— neighborly reparations and sacramental submissiveness—that cam break vicious cycles of alienation and make restoration to life possible. That evangelical reality is of course an embarrassment in a society where truth is rarely told and reconciliation is most often cheap and surface. The enactment of such an alternative is at the core of our faith, however it is that we speak of “atonement.” At the center of such activity is the pastor who has more entrusted in the pastoral office than we usually notice. If we were more self-aware of what belongs to the pastoral office, then we might recognize that what we do in the pastoral office is to conduct and enact myriads of “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.” Such commissions occur randomly here and there; they have their primal locus in the weekly liturgy of forgiveness where all of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and where all of the needfulness of God’s people is dramatized, and where the fullness of God’s grace is made available. In that centered

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    environment of grace and gratitude, neighborly reparation and sacramental submission make sense as they make sense nowhere else. The enactment of such “Truth and Reconciliation Commissions” may be the most important “social action” that we can undertake!

    Note 1. J. Louis Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), 87.