So this morning in the shower I was thinking about the nature of salvation (of all things) and I thought I should share a little bit.
The normal formula goes something like this:
A person repents before God, is baptized, and thus enters into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, resulting in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life after death in heaven.
Pretty simple, revolving around the personal decision to follow Christ. Very black and white.
Based on my agreement with N.T. Wright's view of resurrection and my lifelong faith that God embraces all of God's good Creation, I have (over time) come to understand salvation more like this (as part of the narrative of God's Creation and God's relationship with us, hence the length):
God created the universe, the earth and everything else. God put people on the earth to be stewards of creation, but there was this little problem - sin - which got in the way of all that. So God entered into a covenant relationship with Israel and gave them laws to follow (Torah). This didn't work out too well either, since sin continued to present issues for law-following. Through the prophets, God foretold of a new law and a new covenant that would not be written in stone, but written "on our hearts." There would be salvation not just for Israel, but for all nations.
And so, amazingly, God's Word became flesh - God stooped down low to experience life with us in the person of Jesus Christ, representing the in-breaking of God's kingdom in the world. Jesus told us the kingdom of God was not in the distant future, but it was/is immediately "at hand." Kingdom of God = Salvation. Jesus told stories and performed miracles to show us what life is like in the kingdom. Jesus revealed the eternal love and faithfulness of God. Jesus' death was the sacrifice of atonement for our sins and his resurrection is God's victory over sin and death. This is just the beginning of the story, though, not the end.
Like Jesus, we are also to die "to the world" i.e. follow Jesus in the Way of the Cross, or leave behind the ways of the world which draw us away from God. Like Jesus, we will also be bodily resurrected at the time of the final consummation of God's kingdom. Resurrection, in the true meaning of the word, denotes new life following the end of death as a state (N.T. Wright). It refers to when all Creation will be reconciled to God and it is the time for which all Christians hope. It does not mean "going to heaven for eternal life there." There will be an intermediate stage between our death and the final resurrection, which very well may be in a cloudy place like we imagine heaven, but who knows exactly what it will be like?
Now, getting back to the here and now, let's not forget that when Jesus came to live with us, God's kingdom entered the world even though we're still waiting for its final consummation. In fact, Jesus' life, death and resurrection serve to reconcile us to God (here's the important part) so that we can fulfill our original purpose as the stewards of God's Creation. Just as we have been created purposefully, we have been reconciled to God purposefully. To help us with our new job of creation-stewardship and kingdom-building, God gave us the Holy Spirit. "Help" really is not a good enough word, since it is the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives which reveals God to us and which produces faith (Luther).
And with this we arrive back at baptism, which is God's action through the Holy Spirit to name and claim us as his own, as children of God. In baptism we enter into the new covenant and take our place in the Body of Christ (Paul's wonderful image of the people of God). This does not mean we are suddenly no longer sinful people, nor does it justify us before God as compared to non-baptized people. Rather, each day the Holy Spirit works in our lives to wash us anew, to guide us in our baptismal vocation and to produce genuine faith and trust in God. Through baptism we are indeed "saved" in that we enter into the kingdom of God in its present form and through the Spirit working in us we also enter into the task of building that same kingdom. So I do believe that we, through baptism, enter into salvation presently. I do not believe, and this is a crucial distinction, that when Jesus returns to bring about the resurrection of all Creation that there will be any difference between me and people who are not or were never baptized into the church. I realize there are many Scriptural passages supporting the idea of a final judgment, notably in Matthew's gospel. However, I am of the belief that the love of Christ on the cross did/does not extend only to those in whom the Holy Spirit has produced faith. Again, the importance of Spirit-produced faith cannot be overstated. Other Scripture which points me in this direction includes Isaiah's visions of international salvation as well as Paul's assertion that in Christ there is a place in the kingdom for both Jew and Greek. Is his distinction of Jew and Greek any different than our present distinctions of Christian and Muslim, Jew and Hindu? In the end, perhaps all will become Christians by the time Christ returns, or maybe not. In any case, I don't think time is a limitation for God. Those who have died, those who presently live and those who have not yet been born will be embraced by our loving God upon His return, or at least I hope.
Why is this topic so important to me? By this discussion I mean to emphasize that there is no difference in status between Christians of any sort and Christians of another sort, nor between Christians and non-Christians. I think we employ these distinctions more in an attempt to self-justify than for any other reason, when justification is precisely through Christ alone. I do not mean to de-emphasize our identity and purpose as the Body of Christ, but only a sense of spiritual superiority deriving from such identity. Our identity is, as I mentioned above, deeply purposeful. It is this divine vocation to be shaped by the Holy Spirit and to live now as heralds and even builders of God's kingdom that is the central mission and purpose of Christianity, in my eyes, and it is the definition of salvation. It is in my so limited eyes the most essential "point" of our faith. What this kingdom-building looks like in practice is another topic entirely, but it would be incomplete to point out that its central character is love. And I can't think of a better way to end this topic than with love.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Marriages, Pastors and the ELCA - Is Change in Sight?
I have wanted to write this for a very long time. As a prospective pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) who socializes in a predominately homosexually-oriented group of friends, I have more than a few thoughts concerning my church's ongoing engagement with this topic. The million-dollar questions of whether the church will find a way to publicly recognize and hold accountable lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships and if so, to allow them to serve as rostered leaders (pastors, diaconal ministers and more) are important. However, a singular focus upon them will obscure the greater things our faith has to say about the blessing of human sexuality.
The ELCA has recently published two documents expressing itself on these issues. The first, entitled “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” sets forth how the ELCA understands human sexuality in the context of our “baptismal vocation to love and serve the neighbor.” The second, “Report and Recommendations on Ministry Policies,” more specifically sets forth four decision points for the church to follow which could result in the recognition of same-gender relationships and GLBT Lutherans openly serving as rostered leaders (many already serve quietly).
I would encourage all those interested to read the statements for themselves, however since I agree with them completely, I will consolidate my church's arguments. Our understanding of human sexuality is grounded in our identity as God's image-bearing people, living within the narrative of God's activity to create, to reconcile and eventually to transform the whole universe. Here's the essence of the Lutheran point of view in Cliffs Notes format:
The ELCA has recently published two documents expressing itself on these issues. The first, entitled “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” sets forth how the ELCA understands human sexuality in the context of our “baptismal vocation to love and serve the neighbor.” The second, “Report and Recommendations on Ministry Policies,” more specifically sets forth four decision points for the church to follow which could result in the recognition of same-gender relationships and GLBT Lutherans openly serving as rostered leaders (many already serve quietly).
I would encourage all those interested to read the statements for themselves, however since I agree with them completely, I will consolidate my church's arguments. Our understanding of human sexuality is grounded in our identity as God's image-bearing people, living within the narrative of God's activity to create, to reconcile and eventually to transform the whole universe. Here's the essence of the Lutheran point of view in Cliffs Notes format:
- God's Creation is GOOD, very good! All the world in its great diversity has been created by God for God's purpose. We believe God loves human life so much that “the Word became flesh.”
- This world is deeply and irrevocably sinful. However, God decisively acted in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ to reconcile all Creation to Godself.
- In the future, all of God's people will also be resurrected and all Creation will be transformed in the fulfillment of God's original purpose.
- As the created, baptized people of God, we are set free from the law of sin and death, meaning we no longer live under the fear of condemnation by God. As such, we are called to live out our vocation as heralds of God's coming kingdom, giving tangible expression to our faith in lives of love and service to God and neighbor. Such action is not intended to save ourselves, but naturally follows from faith in God's love and in God's purpose for us within the created order. It is what God made us to do.
- As we anticipate the consummation of God's kingdom and the abolition of sin and death (what Luther describes as the spiritual realm of God's action), we currently live within the created world (Luther's worldly realm) using the gifts of law and reason, forgiveness, mercy and trust to love and serve each other and to facilitate our shared lives.
Human sexuality is one component of human relationships, which are clearly integral to our worldly existence. We are designed by God to be in relationship with one another. As sin is a reality of our world, our relationships are frequently damaged by selfish, irresponsible behavior toward others. How we order and approach our relationships reflects our best effort, empowered by the Holy Spirit, to live as God's people in a broken world. This means that disagreements concerning human sexuality “do not threaten the center of our faith, but rather require our best moral discernment and practical wisdom in the worldly realm.” In other words, gay marriage and gay preachers should not tear our church apart or distract from our greater mission.
Our church specifically affirms trust as the foundation for all healthy, faithful relationships. Human sexuality is an extremely powerful element in our lives. It allows us to express deep intimacy and commitment to another, but when motivated by self-serving purposes can exploit others with devastating results. As we are most vulnerable at times of sexual intimacy, such intimacy also requires the deepest trust and commitment based on mutual, self-giving love.
We identify marriage as “a context of love, trust, honesty and commitment within which a couple can express the profound joy of relationship.” It is more than just this, however, it is a microcosm of the greater Christian community. It models “durable communion for the good of others.” Marriage is built upon the same trust and commitment that we seek to foster among all members of the Body of Christ. This is why the public accountability that marriage offers is so important to our faith. Marriage provides for the couple to be surrounded with prayer, support and guidance as they strive together to live out their faiths. The greater community enriches the couple as they enrich the community.
This is a point that is often missed by some commentators on marriage and the same-sex marriage debate. My friend writes for a blog, The New Gay, where another writer has posted a series of comments about the ELCA's discussions of human sexuality. He does a fairly good job of reflecting our church's position (as I may or may not be doing right now!), however one of his readers rather wholly missed the point in a way that is distressing to me because it portrays the church as a bunch of people requiring submission by gays to a set of arbitrary beliefs. This commentator writes about gay Lutherans:
“They’re just begging for acceptance, and for no good reason that I can
think of. If their faith tells them that their god does not consider them
“sinful,” then why do they need buy-in from people? Is their god the center of
their faith, or is it the human beings within the faith? If it’s their god, then
no problem — they’re free to worship their god any way they want. But if it’s
the acceptance of human beings they’re really worried about, then their pathetic
supplication gets them what they deserve: degradation and table
scraps.”
I see this as a fundamental divergence of worldview. As I summarized above, as Lutherans and more importantly as Christians, we see all humans as irrevocably sinful with no distinction between anyone. At the same time, all are forgiven and justified because of the covenant faithfulness of God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is no difference between gay Christians/Lutherans and straight ones, just as there is no difference between male and female Christians or black and white Christians. The church is not requiring anyone to submit to our judgment for acceptance. Rather, ALL people are welcome at God's Table to experience the grace and love of God and the fellowship of the Body of Christ. Here's the point that is being missed:
As baptized children of God, our faith compels us to be obligated and accountable to God and to each other! To live out our faiths, to give them tangible expression, is to exist in community and to exist for God and for others, as Christ modeled in His life. Again, this is not to save ourselves since we have already been justified. This is simply what it means to be a follower of Jesus. So, we rightly challenge the individualistic idea that we exist independently of others and that our actions do not have consequences for the greater community.
Marriage is the institution which our church sees as the best way to help a couple be accountable to each other in love in the midst of our sinful worldly existence. As I mentioned above, it is an example of the relationship we have individually and communally with God and the relationships with other children of God. Within the covenant of marriage, human sexuality has its role as God's gracious gift to be thankfully enjoyed.
Because of the capacity of human sexuality to damage ourselves and others when it is not accompanied by trust and commitment, our church believes that levels of physical intimacy should be matched with levels of commitment by the couple. For example, the highest levels of intimacy (intercourse) ought not to be practiced outside of marriage. Casual sex misuses God's gift often for self-gratifying purposes with great potential consequences.
Based on the understanding I have attempted to outline above, it is therefore natural that we seek to provide for a way to recognize and surround with prayer publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous same-gender relationships. I personally feel comfortable simply referring to such relationships also as “marriage.” Tradition and certain interpretations of several passages of Scripture have long prevented this church (well, all churches) from doing so. This entry would be considerably longer if I entered the exegetical debate concerning these passages, however I will just say I am of the opinion that they condemn not homosexual individuals but rather harmful and exploitative sexual behavior on the part of same-sex-oriented individuals. This condemnation applies also to the behavior of heterosexually-oriented individuals.
Another argument frequently advanced has to do with the “natural law” of God's created order, i.e. that men and women can procreate and people of the same sex cannot and therefore they should not be married. I would observe that love and procreation are not one and the same thing. As all loving relationships including homosexual marriages/partnerships demonstrate, procreation is not a prerequisite for love. Likewise, procreation can obviously occur in the absence of love between a heterosexual couple. I am living proof of this – my mother wanted children and so my brother and I are products of artificial insemination. And so I ask the question, is our church blessing the physical act of procreation or the covenant of love between two individuals?
Also, I believe completely in my heart that God has formed each of us with a purpose as God has formed all of Creation in its great diversity. All such Creation, most certainly including homosexual individuals, is good as our faith proclaims. I thank God for the diversity of the created universe and I have faith that God's will shall be done. I cannot question God's purpose or intent in directing the nature and course of the universe.
There is a substantial group within the ELCA and in the midst of all Christianity which more or less would agree with this understanding of the place of homosexual individuals within God's Creation. However, there is also a group which feels strongly that we must hold to our traditional approach based on their reading of Scripture and other concerns.
This “conscience-bound” disagreement is where the ELCA task force has done a wonderful and faithful job. As some outside the church may not understand, our obligations to God and to each other and our mission as the Body of Christ are more important than being “right” or winning a debate over this issue. We recognize that people of faith can and will come to differing conclusions on this topic and are bound by their consciences to adhere to their discernment. In order to allow for the bound consciences of all to have open expression in this church, the task force has recommended the following four steps for our church (to be decided upon at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in August):
- To decide whether or not we are “committed to finding ways to allow congregations and synods that choose to do so to recognize, support and hold publicly accountable lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships."
- To decide whether or not we are committed to finding ways for people in such relationships to serve as rostered leaders of the church.
- If the church proceeds positively with regard to steps one and two, the church is asked to “commit to doing so in such a way that all in this church bear the burdens of the other, love the neighbor, and respect the bound conscience of any with whom they disagree.”
- Assuming steps one, two and three, the task force recommends a process for “structured flexibility” in decision-making, reflecting that neither a continuation of the status quo nor unqualified change would be a faithful response to the lack of consensus in the church.
This process basically would allow congregations, candidacy committees (groups that approve candidates to be pastors), synods or bishops to go either way in the case of a particular person or call setting. It also allows congregations or synods to follow their consciences regarding “marriage” processes for same-gender couples. If the resolutions are passed this summer, the various responsible offices within the ELCA would make the appropriate changes to the candidacy process for rostered leaders as well as develop new guidelines for liturgy and process surrounding same-gender “marriages.”
After recent legislative and judicial successes for same-sex marriage in Vermont, Iowa and the District, I view it as increasingly possible that the Assembly may vote to go forward with the task force recommendations in August. More significant to the church's discussion may be the recent endorsement of both task force documents by the Rev. Herbert W. Chilstrom, the first presiding bishop of the ELCA. He cites shifts in opinion on the inclusion of minorities, female pastors, and children receiving communion as examples that the church can change its mind “about some conscience-bound stances.” With many in the church, Chilstrom does not accept the current reality that some bishops are enforcing current policies and some are simply looking the other way.
I am especially interested in how our actions this summer may affect the perception of the church in an American society which is so heavily engaged at present with this topic. While the most important issues here, for our church, are our commitment to a faithful journey together in our vocation as the baptized people of God and the potential for the blessings of marriage and pastoral call to be extended to more brothers and sisters in Christ, a perception that we are not too inflexible to change when appropriate would be most helpful I think.
Perhaps above all, a faithful resolution to the question which has followed the ELCA for two decades and which continues to embroil and nearly define all Christianity would allow us to shift the public eye to our true mission – to open the doors wide for all to experience the love, forgiveness and grace of God and to take their place in the fellowship of the Body of Christ. How many have hesitated to approach the Lord's Table over this persistent debate? I hope and pray, not too many more. May God show us the way through this and all wildernesses of our lives, and may we listen with patience and proceed faithfully and without hesitation.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Foreign Policy - A "Christian" Perspective
As President Obama's foreign policy has begun to emerge through his initial responses to the challenges facing our nation, various commentaries have begun the process of analyzing and characterizing his philosophy. An “Obama Doctrine” has perhaps not yet been so straight-forwardly articulated, but one can identify certain principles taking shape.
In The Washington Post, Richard Cohen describes Obama's approach as a new realism born of the reality that the United States lacks the capacity to unilaterally intervene to establish our moral principles at times and places of our choosing around the world. He cites Obama's summary of the ideas of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as insight into Obama's outlook on foreign policy. Obama wrote that although “there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain [...] we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.”
I thank Mr. Cohen for providing a nice segway into my topic of discussion, which is how the Christian faith can inform American foreign policy in the early twenty-first century. Now, I am no expert on the subject of American foreign policy, but after a quick read-through of the current issue of Foreign Affairs I can at least bring up what its editors consider to be the top issues of the day.
The overall picture is one of a shifting role for the United States in the international arena. Rather than remaining the world's sole superpower, America's new place is described as a still-predominant power playing a stabilizing and standard-setting role in key regions and institutions around the globe.
I find that this shifting role nicely parallels the mission entrusted to Christians to live out our faiths in love, service and witness to the world. It is fair to say that Christians have in the past, and occasionally in the present, viewed their mission as an imperative to save the world from variously defined and personifed evils as well as to “convert” all peoples to a particular tradition of the faith. It strikes me that this outlook places an excessive amount of faith and responsibility on weak, sinful and often misguided human beings and not enough faith in the Creator and Savior of the universe. If we truly believe that all the world is created by God and rests comfortably in God's hands, then we are called to trust and submit ourselves in faith to be used as God directs.
We must always guard against complacency, of course. As Luther directed, faith must be made active in love, or it is no faith at all. We do what we can, but we are not responsible for setting the world aright. In fact, we believe that all Creation has already been reconciled to God through the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have faith that the activities of Creation will occur as God directs. The burdens are lifted from our shoulders and we are made free in Christ to become a new creation, living lives of witness in response to the grace of God.
I would offer another frequently-quoted piece from Mr. Niebuhr which reflects this outlook far more eloquently. This prayer he composed deals with our spiritual lives whereas Mr. Obama invoked some of his same ideas in the context of politics.
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that you will make all things right,
If I surrender to your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
If we can find the courage to change the things we can change, then the contributors to the most recent Foreign Affairs offer us several insights as to a starting place. Without completely summarizing their thoughts, they reveal several opportunities for American Christians to make their voices heard regarding U.S. foreign policy.
For instance, as Bennett Ramberg discusses, a withdrawal from Iraq shows the Muslim world that we are not bent upon dominating their societies. Our soldiers policing their streets are merely the latest in a centuries-long string of occupying armies and their presence only feeds the claim of radicals that Americans seek to extend the rule of imperial Western powers over their people. Let us allow them to assert their own will in remaking their societies, knowing fully that chaos and bloodshed will continue for some time. This is the reality of sin in the world.
However, this should be only the beginning of a new engagement with their societies as equals. If we wish to see democracy, the rule of law, womens' rights and peace in the Muslim world, then we ought to do everything we can to encourage economic development and build relationships which cannot be torn apart by extremist propaganda. We must show that we are concerned with the education and health of their children, the reign of justice and peace and the eradication of abject poverty. Our soldiers are courageously and tirelessly working toward many of these goals now, however how can they be successful if their very presence is resented? We must take our time and work with the peoples of the world on their terms, not on ours. Our call is to serve and to love, not to impose our will.
Another trend making headlines is the world's emerging multipolarity. The Cold War is long past and the United States is no longer unchallenged in its ability to project power anywhere on the globe. India and China are the two massive states on the rise, Russia is asserting itself once again and we cannot forget about Brazil, Japan, Germany and many others I'm leaving out. America cannot be the world's policeman nor act alone as the arsenal of democracy. It must allow others to play a role and it would simply be overexerting itself to its own peril to continue to attempt unilateral action on a consistent basis. It is both smart and necessary to allow others to share the load while maintaining a balancing role. Robert Kaplan discusses how the U.S. Navy will play just such a role in the Indian Ocean in the coming decades, managing the rise and inevitable head-bumping of India and China.
To return to my theme of the Christian outlook on foreign policy, I would like to emphasize several key principles that should guide our advocacy. Underlying everything is a basic respect for all peoples, societies and cultures everywhere as invaluable parts of the Body of Christ. God created us in all our diversity and we are called to treat all people with dignity and seek their contributions to the well-being of humanity. This principle reveals our common citizenship in Christ and the sovereignty of God over all Creation. It reflects the artificiality of our political structures and structural relationships that divide God's people. Through building lasting relationships that cut across these divisions at the most basic human level, Christians can work to unite the Body of Christ (that is, the whole world).
What types of activities does this outreach prescribe? It means community building through meal sharing, burden bearing and feet washing (I speak figuratively, although these literal actions are good too!). It means distributing the material blessings of Creation more evenly across God's people. It means that we reject coercion, violence, exploitation, injustice, prejudice and mistrust, standing against them wherever they appear. More than anything, we must start with tearing down the walls that divide us, those of stone as well as those erected by ignorance and fear. By living together, working together and striving in faith together it will be impossible to ignore the status we all share as children of God. It is this common identity we must sow around the world.
“Christian foreign policy” is never implemented from the top-down but from the bottom-up, something all missionaries surely understand. We should seek not to change people but to serve them, not to rule them but rather to learn from them. We can't afford to be naive in this very real world and we won't change everything according to any plan we establish. We can only live as we are called to live and leave the rest to God. Although this is another story entirely, I think many Christians including myself have found this to be true in their personal lives. It is certainly also true for our American society as we interact with other peoples. From my own experience I can say that when we allow God to lead, what follows is always better than anything we could have imagined on our own :)
In The Washington Post, Richard Cohen describes Obama's approach as a new realism born of the reality that the United States lacks the capacity to unilaterally intervene to establish our moral principles at times and places of our choosing around the world. He cites Obama's summary of the ideas of the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as insight into Obama's outlook on foreign policy. Obama wrote that although “there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain [...] we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.”
I thank Mr. Cohen for providing a nice segway into my topic of discussion, which is how the Christian faith can inform American foreign policy in the early twenty-first century. Now, I am no expert on the subject of American foreign policy, but after a quick read-through of the current issue of Foreign Affairs I can at least bring up what its editors consider to be the top issues of the day.
The overall picture is one of a shifting role for the United States in the international arena. Rather than remaining the world's sole superpower, America's new place is described as a still-predominant power playing a stabilizing and standard-setting role in key regions and institutions around the globe.
I find that this shifting role nicely parallels the mission entrusted to Christians to live out our faiths in love, service and witness to the world. It is fair to say that Christians have in the past, and occasionally in the present, viewed their mission as an imperative to save the world from variously defined and personifed evils as well as to “convert” all peoples to a particular tradition of the faith. It strikes me that this outlook places an excessive amount of faith and responsibility on weak, sinful and often misguided human beings and not enough faith in the Creator and Savior of the universe. If we truly believe that all the world is created by God and rests comfortably in God's hands, then we are called to trust and submit ourselves in faith to be used as God directs.
We must always guard against complacency, of course. As Luther directed, faith must be made active in love, or it is no faith at all. We do what we can, but we are not responsible for setting the world aright. In fact, we believe that all Creation has already been reconciled to God through the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have faith that the activities of Creation will occur as God directs. The burdens are lifted from our shoulders and we are made free in Christ to become a new creation, living lives of witness in response to the grace of God.
I would offer another frequently-quoted piece from Mr. Niebuhr which reflects this outlook far more eloquently. This prayer he composed deals with our spiritual lives whereas Mr. Obama invoked some of his same ideas in the context of politics.
God, give us grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that you will make all things right,
If I surrender to your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
If we can find the courage to change the things we can change, then the contributors to the most recent Foreign Affairs offer us several insights as to a starting place. Without completely summarizing their thoughts, they reveal several opportunities for American Christians to make their voices heard regarding U.S. foreign policy.
For instance, as Bennett Ramberg discusses, a withdrawal from Iraq shows the Muslim world that we are not bent upon dominating their societies. Our soldiers policing their streets are merely the latest in a centuries-long string of occupying armies and their presence only feeds the claim of radicals that Americans seek to extend the rule of imperial Western powers over their people. Let us allow them to assert their own will in remaking their societies, knowing fully that chaos and bloodshed will continue for some time. This is the reality of sin in the world.
However, this should be only the beginning of a new engagement with their societies as equals. If we wish to see democracy, the rule of law, womens' rights and peace in the Muslim world, then we ought to do everything we can to encourage economic development and build relationships which cannot be torn apart by extremist propaganda. We must show that we are concerned with the education and health of their children, the reign of justice and peace and the eradication of abject poverty. Our soldiers are courageously and tirelessly working toward many of these goals now, however how can they be successful if their very presence is resented? We must take our time and work with the peoples of the world on their terms, not on ours. Our call is to serve and to love, not to impose our will.
Another trend making headlines is the world's emerging multipolarity. The Cold War is long past and the United States is no longer unchallenged in its ability to project power anywhere on the globe. India and China are the two massive states on the rise, Russia is asserting itself once again and we cannot forget about Brazil, Japan, Germany and many others I'm leaving out. America cannot be the world's policeman nor act alone as the arsenal of democracy. It must allow others to play a role and it would simply be overexerting itself to its own peril to continue to attempt unilateral action on a consistent basis. It is both smart and necessary to allow others to share the load while maintaining a balancing role. Robert Kaplan discusses how the U.S. Navy will play just such a role in the Indian Ocean in the coming decades, managing the rise and inevitable head-bumping of India and China.
To return to my theme of the Christian outlook on foreign policy, I would like to emphasize several key principles that should guide our advocacy. Underlying everything is a basic respect for all peoples, societies and cultures everywhere as invaluable parts of the Body of Christ. God created us in all our diversity and we are called to treat all people with dignity and seek their contributions to the well-being of humanity. This principle reveals our common citizenship in Christ and the sovereignty of God over all Creation. It reflects the artificiality of our political structures and structural relationships that divide God's people. Through building lasting relationships that cut across these divisions at the most basic human level, Christians can work to unite the Body of Christ (that is, the whole world).
What types of activities does this outreach prescribe? It means community building through meal sharing, burden bearing and feet washing (I speak figuratively, although these literal actions are good too!). It means distributing the material blessings of Creation more evenly across God's people. It means that we reject coercion, violence, exploitation, injustice, prejudice and mistrust, standing against them wherever they appear. More than anything, we must start with tearing down the walls that divide us, those of stone as well as those erected by ignorance and fear. By living together, working together and striving in faith together it will be impossible to ignore the status we all share as children of God. It is this common identity we must sow around the world.
“Christian foreign policy” is never implemented from the top-down but from the bottom-up, something all missionaries surely understand. We should seek not to change people but to serve them, not to rule them but rather to learn from them. We can't afford to be naive in this very real world and we won't change everything according to any plan we establish. We can only live as we are called to live and leave the rest to God. Although this is another story entirely, I think many Christians including myself have found this to be true in their personal lives. It is certainly also true for our American society as we interact with other peoples. From my own experience I can say that when we allow God to lead, what follows is always better than anything we could have imagined on our own :)
Christian Message - Follow Up
***ACTUALLY FIRST POSTED ON FEBRUARY 4, 2009***
I am making an effort (on some days more than others) to put forth thoughts based on my study of the Bible and an awareness of the church's role and position in our society today. I am very grateful that this topic has generated discussion and I'm appreciative of all comments.
To clarify my thoughts on the division between the church and our worldly institutions, let me start where I agree. I agree that we owe the government nothing but that which we agree to give it. The government, businesses and the like are all just agreements (contracts) between humans. My point is that they hold no sovereignty over us as children of God (I include all humanity, not just self-identifying Christians, as 'children of God' since there is no other Creator). I also agree that the appeal for change, in accordance with God's command to love one another, is rightly directed to people directly and not to their institutions.
Through the prophet Jeremiah, God told us of the new covenant which would be written not on stone tablets but on our hearts. It is much more than following the list of commands recorded by Moses at Mt. Sinai, it is orienting our very lives around the love and service of the LORD. As Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount, He doesn't just want us to live our lives within a box bounded by hard rules, but he wants our hearts to be His alone. He wants us not to offer sacrifices upon the altar, but to “present our bodies as a living sacrifice.”
This is the Kingdom of God (as Mark so names it) or the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew's description) that Jesus is talking about – the state of man's unity with God and with one another. It is what Christ asks us to pray for, that God's will would be done in our world, on earth, as it is in heaven. As we are made a new creation in baptism, bound to God, we are also called to remake our shared lives. Christ restores us and uses us to restore Creation.
This doesn't stop where our worldly institutions claim to hold sovereignty. To separate man-made institutions and their sphere of responsibility from the calling of the church is to elevate them to the same level. In a Christ-centered life, they merely facilitate our interaction and the distribution of resources. They are not sovereign in and of themselves. The business of the world is the church's business.
As such, why would we not use the levers of the world to put our faith in action, to fulfill God's commandment to love one another? Why should we allow the rigidity of global capitalism or geopolitical balances of power to stand in the way of bringing God's justice to the downtrodden in our midst?
Yes, these institutions serve and engage many more people than those who call themselves Christians. And as Christians, we are called precisely to serve all people, especially those who do not call themselves Christians.
I am not calling for a “Christian take-over” of global economic and political institutions, quite the contrary. I believe that we as Christians should work tirelessly within the worldly sphere to give expression to our faith through acts of love. I leave the question open as to what exactly this will look like, for the specific expressions will be as diverse as God's people. But certainly this includes Christians being at the forefront of issues like civil rights and civil liberties for all, social justice, stewardship of God's creation (church-speak for environmental protection), peacemaking, immigration, etc, etc.
To address Jesus' line which has been referenced here about giving what is properly due to Caesar and to God, I would say this. If we agree to pay taxes to a government (Caesar), then we should pay them as Jesus tells us to. It's a way of honoring our commitments to each other. This commitment, however, is much less of a commitment than the one we make to God, the one where we enter into a covenant for our very lives. In the end, what really belongs to Caesar except that which we agree to give him? Everything is from the LORD and all Creation belongs to God. What we give to Caesar is only that with which God has blessed us. We should not use this line to justify complacency toward to fulfillment of what Jesus came to do – to restore us through His death as God's people so that we might live for God alone. We must not be afraid to challenge the status quo.
Final caveat – the reality of sin is unchanged. We will screw up, we will fall short. This is why we come to God in confession and why we build up one another in fellowship. But the good news is that just as we fail, God makes us whole again through Christ today and every day. The Holy Spirit, amazingly, still uses us as sinners that are justified by God's grace.
I am making an effort (on some days more than others) to put forth thoughts based on my study of the Bible and an awareness of the church's role and position in our society today. I am very grateful that this topic has generated discussion and I'm appreciative of all comments.
To clarify my thoughts on the division between the church and our worldly institutions, let me start where I agree. I agree that we owe the government nothing but that which we agree to give it. The government, businesses and the like are all just agreements (contracts) between humans. My point is that they hold no sovereignty over us as children of God (I include all humanity, not just self-identifying Christians, as 'children of God' since there is no other Creator). I also agree that the appeal for change, in accordance with God's command to love one another, is rightly directed to people directly and not to their institutions.
Through the prophet Jeremiah, God told us of the new covenant which would be written not on stone tablets but on our hearts. It is much more than following the list of commands recorded by Moses at Mt. Sinai, it is orienting our very lives around the love and service of the LORD. As Jesus describes in the Sermon on the Mount, He doesn't just want us to live our lives within a box bounded by hard rules, but he wants our hearts to be His alone. He wants us not to offer sacrifices upon the altar, but to “present our bodies as a living sacrifice.”
This is the Kingdom of God (as Mark so names it) or the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew's description) that Jesus is talking about – the state of man's unity with God and with one another. It is what Christ asks us to pray for, that God's will would be done in our world, on earth, as it is in heaven. As we are made a new creation in baptism, bound to God, we are also called to remake our shared lives. Christ restores us and uses us to restore Creation.
This doesn't stop where our worldly institutions claim to hold sovereignty. To separate man-made institutions and their sphere of responsibility from the calling of the church is to elevate them to the same level. In a Christ-centered life, they merely facilitate our interaction and the distribution of resources. They are not sovereign in and of themselves. The business of the world is the church's business.
As such, why would we not use the levers of the world to put our faith in action, to fulfill God's commandment to love one another? Why should we allow the rigidity of global capitalism or geopolitical balances of power to stand in the way of bringing God's justice to the downtrodden in our midst?
Yes, these institutions serve and engage many more people than those who call themselves Christians. And as Christians, we are called precisely to serve all people, especially those who do not call themselves Christians.
I am not calling for a “Christian take-over” of global economic and political institutions, quite the contrary. I believe that we as Christians should work tirelessly within the worldly sphere to give expression to our faith through acts of love. I leave the question open as to what exactly this will look like, for the specific expressions will be as diverse as God's people. But certainly this includes Christians being at the forefront of issues like civil rights and civil liberties for all, social justice, stewardship of God's creation (church-speak for environmental protection), peacemaking, immigration, etc, etc.
To address Jesus' line which has been referenced here about giving what is properly due to Caesar and to God, I would say this. If we agree to pay taxes to a government (Caesar), then we should pay them as Jesus tells us to. It's a way of honoring our commitments to each other. This commitment, however, is much less of a commitment than the one we make to God, the one where we enter into a covenant for our very lives. In the end, what really belongs to Caesar except that which we agree to give him? Everything is from the LORD and all Creation belongs to God. What we give to Caesar is only that with which God has blessed us. We should not use this line to justify complacency toward to fulfillment of what Jesus came to do – to restore us through His death as God's people so that we might live for God alone. We must not be afraid to challenge the status quo.
Final caveat – the reality of sin is unchanged. We will screw up, we will fall short. This is why we come to God in confession and why we build up one another in fellowship. But the good news is that just as we fail, God makes us whole again through Christ today and every day. The Holy Spirit, amazingly, still uses us as sinners that are justified by God's grace.
The Recession of the Christian Message
***ACTUALLY FIRST POSTED ON JANUARY 29, 2009***
I have just been reading The Washington Post like any self-respecting William and Mary graduate and as we all know, the news isn't that great. 65,000 layoffs announced in America just this week alone. What does that mean? In my hometown of Richmond, it means a lot of former Circuit City employees, including a man at my family's church, are wondering what to do next.
For my mother, who has been unable to continue in her lifelong career of nursing due to a host of medical issues, it means there are no paying jobs to be had for those without a degree or significant experience in a particular field. In my case, I encountered a much tougher job search than I anticipated when I came down here to help out the family, and I was just looking to wait tables. Business isn't exactly booming, either.
Let me get back on track, here, I apologize for my personal venting.
Many smart people are being paid right now to figure out why this is happening and what should be done about it. President Obama has secured House passage of an $819 billion economic stimulus package with a similar version moving its way through the Senate. I hope and pray that our government will come to a consensus around how best to get things going again.
However it is times like this one when some essential truths about humanity and God come into sharp focus. Our time – right now – does not only suffer from a global recession, but global violent conflict as well. Not only do we wonder why it's all happening, but also why it is happening to some and not others. Certainly we notice what appears to us to be a certain injustice about it all.
Why does the man who dedicated his life to a company find himself without a job to feed his five children? Why does the innocent Israeli boy flee from rocket attacks and the innocent Palestinian girl from tanks rumbling down her street? Why did my mother work her entire life to end up flat broke with no job prospects, no income, no health insurance?
We're not the first to ask these questions, nor will we be the last. In the book of Job we find an entire section of the Bible about a righteous man who lost everything and spent pages pleading with God, “why me?”
I personally can identify pretty easily with Job's feelings, as I'm sure most of us can. But the point of Job is not just to carry on forever with complaints to God. Rather than being unique, his problems are the basic symptoms of a condition we all carry. We are all born into a fallen humanity, into a broken world ridden with sin. Theologically and practically, we dwell in a land far removed from Paradise.
As if it were not obvious, I'm certainly not the first to come to that conclusion, either. King Solomon, the great monarch who ruled over Israel at the height of its worldly power, used a brief phrase to capture the essential nature of a worldly life in his reflections we call the book of Ecclesiastes:
“Vanity of vanities!”
Yes, I think he hit the nail on the head centuries before the nihilists could make the point that life is not worth living. Correction – a worldly life, a life lived of and for what can be acquired for oneself in this world, is vanity and nothing more.
Possessions can be taken from you not because you screwed up somehow and not because didn't do a good enough job. No, maybe you just live in the path of a hurricane or maybe a thief thought your house was his best prospect. Maybe your industry is caught in the midst of a global economic downturn, maybe for some reason which still eludes our medicine, you develop a debilitating illness.
I could go on but the point is clear – nothing in this life is guaranteed. Nothing we do ensures any temporal condition of wealth, health or security. Any “thing” to which we cling can and will be ripped away from us tomorrow.
This is not God's punishment as some would argue. Christians bear witness that Christ's faithfulness on the cross has paid the price for the sins of all. We know and proclaim to all that our God “emptied himself” for us - for you and for me. God's judgment is love, mercy and grace for all, regardless of how they have lived their lives.
So if it's not punishment, what do we do about all this suffering that surrounds us? I think the first step is to realize something else about everything that surrounds us and everything that we are.
It is all blessing, the Creation of the Almighty God. As such, it belongs to God, who has graciously granted it to us so that we might be God's people. As we are part of creation, the Christian affirms ultimate allegiance to God as a child of God. We are therefore all merely tenants, to echo the parable, in our homes, in our organizations and political structures, even in our bodies.
Isn't that a drastically different notion than the world would have us believe? It's setting our order of things on its head. It is a nothing less than a redefinition of the concepts of property, sovereignty and citizenship.
We don't belong to our jobs or even to our nations. They hold no ultimate sovereignty over us, just as we hold no ultimate ownership over our “property.” We are not slaves to the almighty dollar, we are children of the Almighty God. We hold a common citizenship in the Body of Christ, a citizenship whose rolls know no bounds. The membership requirement is merely an acceptance that one is justified by the love and grace of God alone, not by the size of our bank accounts, the flag over our nation or the good deeds we think we're doing.
This isn't to say that nations and economic systems are bad things, but simply that they are blessings from God which help us to order and regulate our shared lives. The point is that they are only as valuable as they are useful to do God's work in the world.
To return to the question of the suffering in our midst, that means we should use these wonderful tools of government and economics, which God has provided us through our very capable minds, to extend God's blessings of creation and fellowship to all who need them. It also means that the boundaries, walls, borders and fences we have built across the earth are like giant lacerations in the Body of Christ. To be true to our calling, Christians must transcend national borders and concepts of “property” and “earnings.”
How can we hold ultimate claim to something given to us by God? How can we say it “belongs” to us, that we have “earned” it through our efforts and therefore it is justified that we gorge ourselves with wealth while brothers and sisters starve in the cold? The fact that our wealth can disappear in an instant is proof enough to me that it does not serve us, but rather that too often we serve it.
In living a life for God alone, we will not find ourselves disappointed. In fact, God is the only end to which we can devote our lives without the ground slipping away from beneath our feet. The Rock of our salvation is faithful “to the point of death - even death on a cross.” No natural disaster, outbreak of war or credit market meltdown can separate us from the love of our God. In the heart of the one who lives for God, there is a contentment born of faith in the steadfast love of the LORD which endures forever.
In devoting our hearts to God, I think we can also find answers to many of the problems that plague us. How can one be motivated to work without living for profit, earnings and property?
One devoted to God wants to work for the benefit of all God's people, regardless of what accrues to him or her as a result. How can we provide for our security without making war between our nation and others? One devoted to God loves all God's people and seeks what is best for them, regardless of what harm may come to him or her personally.
You are right to remind me that we are irrevocably sinful and we will always “miss the mark.”
We will always have need of institutions to order our interactions. But we must use our worldly institutions to serve God, rather than devoting our lives and possessions, all of which belong to God, to service the institutions themselves. To do so is to have a god apart from the LORD our God. It is to deny our freedom in Christ.
To address how Christians can lead the way toward a world which behaves more like one Body – one family - rather than like a precarious balance of power and resources is to address a very large question. But this is a large part of the message the Christian Body must communicate to the world, to show people everywhere that it offers an alternative worldview to that which prevails in our time. Christianity must cease acting like an institution of the world seeking to protect its turf from gradual erosion and take up its calling to herald the “new thing” God is doing in our midst.
It must take up Jesus' urgent cry which begins Mark's gospel, “'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news.'”
I will close for now with some timely thoughts from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words today resound with such meaning as we have witnessed the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I have recently been drawn, however, to a sermon Dr. King delivered in 1956 entitled, “Paul's Letter to American Christians.” Upon my discovery of this sermon, I could hardly contain my excitement given that the apostle Paul and Dr. King are more or less my personal heroes! I have to admit I even thought about playing around with the theme myself once after pouring through the Pauline correspondence. After reading Dr. King's letter, however, I realize I could never do it justice.
Here are a few of his messages (Dr. King is speaking as the apostle Paul to Christians in America) which I think serve as thought-provoking starting points for discussion around how the Christian community can challenge the way of the world:
On Government:
“I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unChristian world.”
“But American Christians, I must say to you as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, 'Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind'...Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God's will it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.”
On Capitalism:
“Through this economic system you have been able to do wonders...All of this is marvelous. But Americans, there is a danger that you will misuse your capitalism...It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism.”
“You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty from the face of the earth. God never intended for for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.”
On the Present State of the Church:
“You must come to see that God is neither a Baptist nor a Methodist; He is neither a Presbyterian nor an Episcopalian. God is bigger than all your denominations.”
“But I am disturbed about a person or an institution that claims infallibility in this world.”
“You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday morning...you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is.”
On Methods:
“As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love...If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.”
I have just been reading The Washington Post like any self-respecting William and Mary graduate and as we all know, the news isn't that great. 65,000 layoffs announced in America just this week alone. What does that mean? In my hometown of Richmond, it means a lot of former Circuit City employees, including a man at my family's church, are wondering what to do next.
For my mother, who has been unable to continue in her lifelong career of nursing due to a host of medical issues, it means there are no paying jobs to be had for those without a degree or significant experience in a particular field. In my case, I encountered a much tougher job search than I anticipated when I came down here to help out the family, and I was just looking to wait tables. Business isn't exactly booming, either.
Let me get back on track, here, I apologize for my personal venting.
Many smart people are being paid right now to figure out why this is happening and what should be done about it. President Obama has secured House passage of an $819 billion economic stimulus package with a similar version moving its way through the Senate. I hope and pray that our government will come to a consensus around how best to get things going again.
However it is times like this one when some essential truths about humanity and God come into sharp focus. Our time – right now – does not only suffer from a global recession, but global violent conflict as well. Not only do we wonder why it's all happening, but also why it is happening to some and not others. Certainly we notice what appears to us to be a certain injustice about it all.
Why does the man who dedicated his life to a company find himself without a job to feed his five children? Why does the innocent Israeli boy flee from rocket attacks and the innocent Palestinian girl from tanks rumbling down her street? Why did my mother work her entire life to end up flat broke with no job prospects, no income, no health insurance?
We're not the first to ask these questions, nor will we be the last. In the book of Job we find an entire section of the Bible about a righteous man who lost everything and spent pages pleading with God, “why me?”
I personally can identify pretty easily with Job's feelings, as I'm sure most of us can. But the point of Job is not just to carry on forever with complaints to God. Rather than being unique, his problems are the basic symptoms of a condition we all carry. We are all born into a fallen humanity, into a broken world ridden with sin. Theologically and practically, we dwell in a land far removed from Paradise.
As if it were not obvious, I'm certainly not the first to come to that conclusion, either. King Solomon, the great monarch who ruled over Israel at the height of its worldly power, used a brief phrase to capture the essential nature of a worldly life in his reflections we call the book of Ecclesiastes:
“Vanity of vanities!”
Yes, I think he hit the nail on the head centuries before the nihilists could make the point that life is not worth living. Correction – a worldly life, a life lived of and for what can be acquired for oneself in this world, is vanity and nothing more.
Possessions can be taken from you not because you screwed up somehow and not because didn't do a good enough job. No, maybe you just live in the path of a hurricane or maybe a thief thought your house was his best prospect. Maybe your industry is caught in the midst of a global economic downturn, maybe for some reason which still eludes our medicine, you develop a debilitating illness.
I could go on but the point is clear – nothing in this life is guaranteed. Nothing we do ensures any temporal condition of wealth, health or security. Any “thing” to which we cling can and will be ripped away from us tomorrow.
This is not God's punishment as some would argue. Christians bear witness that Christ's faithfulness on the cross has paid the price for the sins of all. We know and proclaim to all that our God “emptied himself” for us - for you and for me. God's judgment is love, mercy and grace for all, regardless of how they have lived their lives.
So if it's not punishment, what do we do about all this suffering that surrounds us? I think the first step is to realize something else about everything that surrounds us and everything that we are.
It is all blessing, the Creation of the Almighty God. As such, it belongs to God, who has graciously granted it to us so that we might be God's people. As we are part of creation, the Christian affirms ultimate allegiance to God as a child of God. We are therefore all merely tenants, to echo the parable, in our homes, in our organizations and political structures, even in our bodies.
Isn't that a drastically different notion than the world would have us believe? It's setting our order of things on its head. It is a nothing less than a redefinition of the concepts of property, sovereignty and citizenship.
We don't belong to our jobs or even to our nations. They hold no ultimate sovereignty over us, just as we hold no ultimate ownership over our “property.” We are not slaves to the almighty dollar, we are children of the Almighty God. We hold a common citizenship in the Body of Christ, a citizenship whose rolls know no bounds. The membership requirement is merely an acceptance that one is justified by the love and grace of God alone, not by the size of our bank accounts, the flag over our nation or the good deeds we think we're doing.
This isn't to say that nations and economic systems are bad things, but simply that they are blessings from God which help us to order and regulate our shared lives. The point is that they are only as valuable as they are useful to do God's work in the world.
To return to the question of the suffering in our midst, that means we should use these wonderful tools of government and economics, which God has provided us through our very capable minds, to extend God's blessings of creation and fellowship to all who need them. It also means that the boundaries, walls, borders and fences we have built across the earth are like giant lacerations in the Body of Christ. To be true to our calling, Christians must transcend national borders and concepts of “property” and “earnings.”
How can we hold ultimate claim to something given to us by God? How can we say it “belongs” to us, that we have “earned” it through our efforts and therefore it is justified that we gorge ourselves with wealth while brothers and sisters starve in the cold? The fact that our wealth can disappear in an instant is proof enough to me that it does not serve us, but rather that too often we serve it.
In living a life for God alone, we will not find ourselves disappointed. In fact, God is the only end to which we can devote our lives without the ground slipping away from beneath our feet. The Rock of our salvation is faithful “to the point of death - even death on a cross.” No natural disaster, outbreak of war or credit market meltdown can separate us from the love of our God. In the heart of the one who lives for God, there is a contentment born of faith in the steadfast love of the LORD which endures forever.
In devoting our hearts to God, I think we can also find answers to many of the problems that plague us. How can one be motivated to work without living for profit, earnings and property?
One devoted to God wants to work for the benefit of all God's people, regardless of what accrues to him or her as a result. How can we provide for our security without making war between our nation and others? One devoted to God loves all God's people and seeks what is best for them, regardless of what harm may come to him or her personally.
You are right to remind me that we are irrevocably sinful and we will always “miss the mark.”
We will always have need of institutions to order our interactions. But we must use our worldly institutions to serve God, rather than devoting our lives and possessions, all of which belong to God, to service the institutions themselves. To do so is to have a god apart from the LORD our God. It is to deny our freedom in Christ.
To address how Christians can lead the way toward a world which behaves more like one Body – one family - rather than like a precarious balance of power and resources is to address a very large question. But this is a large part of the message the Christian Body must communicate to the world, to show people everywhere that it offers an alternative worldview to that which prevails in our time. Christianity must cease acting like an institution of the world seeking to protect its turf from gradual erosion and take up its calling to herald the “new thing” God is doing in our midst.
It must take up Jesus' urgent cry which begins Mark's gospel, “'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the good news.'”
I will close for now with some timely thoughts from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words today resound with such meaning as we have witnessed the inauguration of President Barack Obama. I have recently been drawn, however, to a sermon Dr. King delivered in 1956 entitled, “Paul's Letter to American Christians.” Upon my discovery of this sermon, I could hardly contain my excitement given that the apostle Paul and Dr. King are more or less my personal heroes! I have to admit I even thought about playing around with the theme myself once after pouring through the Pauline correspondence. After reading Dr. King's letter, however, I realize I could never do it justice.
Here are a few of his messages (Dr. King is speaking as the apostle Paul to Christians in America) which I think serve as thought-provoking starting points for discussion around how the Christian community can challenge the way of the world:
On Government:
“I am impelled to write you concerning the responsibilities laid upon you to live as Christians in the midst of an unChristian world.”
“But American Christians, I must say to you as I said to the Roman Christians years ago, 'Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind'...Therefore, your ultimate allegiance is not to the government, not to the state, not to nation, not to any man-made institution. The Christian owes his ultimate allegiance to God, and if any earthly institution conflicts with God's will it is your Christian duty to take a stand against it. You must never allow the transitory evanescent demands of man-made institutions to take precedence over the eternal demands of the Almighty God.”
On Capitalism:
“Through this economic system you have been able to do wonders...All of this is marvelous. But Americans, there is a danger that you will misuse your capitalism...It can cause one to live a life of gross materialism.”
“You can work within the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth. You can use your powerful economic resources to wipe poverty from the face of the earth. God never intended for for one group of people to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.”
On the Present State of the Church:
“You must come to see that God is neither a Baptist nor a Methodist; He is neither a Presbyterian nor an Episcopalian. God is bigger than all your denominations.”
“But I am disturbed about a person or an institution that claims infallibility in this world.”
“You have allowed segregation to creep into the doors of the church. How can such a division exist in the true Body of Christ? You must face the tragic fact that when you stand at 11:00 on Sunday morning...you stand in the most segregated hour of Christian America. They tell me that there is more integration in the entertaining world and other secular agencies than there is in the Christian church. How appalling that is.”
On Methods:
“As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapon of love...If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.”
A Voice Cries Out!
***ACTUALLY FIRST POSTED ON DECEMBER 24, 2008***
Each year I gauge my sense of the coming holiday season by how much everything “seems like Christmas.” Whether it's the smell of cookies baking in the oven, twinkling lights and green garland in the living room or all my favorite carols playing in the background, I look to such signs to know that it's really Christmas time. However, the weeks leading up to Christmas should properly be identified as exactly what they are – the time of Advent, or the Coming of the Messiah.
One of my favorite things about Advent is the chance to hear the words of the great prophets of the LORD. Only in recent weeks have I taken the time to really experience all the prophets have to say about the condition of the nation of Israel, God's chosen people, and how their words apply equally to our own times. I want to share some of my favorite texts from two of the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and how I believe they have much to say about Advent and Christmas and what they ought to mean in our lives today.
But first, let us explore the more familiar, reassuring words of Isaiah often used during Advent:
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken” (Is. 40: 1-5).
It is very difficult to understand the deep meaning of these words without knowing the depths from which the prophet is speaking. The nation of Israel has divided into Northern and Southern Kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom is being destroyed and conquered and Judah is not far away from the same fate (which it will, of course, suffer at the hands of Babylon). The land given to Israel as promised by the God who led them out of bondage in Egypt was being taken from them. The Temple, the very dwelling place of the One True God, was in danger of being sacked by pagans and carried off piecemeal to distant capitals. Without going much further into detail, it was as if God had abandoned God's people and was nowhere to be found. The foundation of Israel's existence seemed in question.
Naturally, God's covenant people wondered why this was going on and most surely lifted appeal after appeal to God for mercy, or even any sign at all. God's answer was not always so “comforting.”
Through the prophet Jeremiah, God declares “Because your guilt is great, because your sins are so numerous, I have done these things to you...The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind” (Jer. 30: 15,24).
By what law does God convict the nation of Israel? It is Torah, the Law given to Moses and written on stone tablets at Mount Sinai. Chief among Israel's sin is its faithlessness to worship God alone. Jeremiah reflects God's anguish and anger directed toward Israel's worship of other gods using not-so-subtle imagery of marriage infidelity:
“On every high hill and under every green tree you sprawled and played the whore...know what you have done – a restive young camel interlacing her tracks, a wild ass at home in the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind! Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves; in her month they will find her” (Jer. 2: 20, 23-24).
After this comparison it is no wonder the powers that be put Jeremiah in chains and locked him up! The prophet is clear that the people have themselves to blame for their despair:
“But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them come, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah” (Jer. 2:28).
Who are the 'other gods' to whom we often direct our hopes and the focus of our energies, skills and possessions, when all these belong to the One God who created both them and us? Perhaps they also are as numerous as the cities where we raise up idols in place of the LORD and “do not defend the rights of the needy” (Jer. 5:28). I need not list them, for we all can peer into our lives and take a glance at our society to find them in abundance.
This is not the stuff of Christmas cheer and warm baking cookies, yet it is precisely the point in history and now, in our lives, at which God chooses to inject Godself into the world.
I like to imagine a dark, cold night not unlike the one Luke describes with shepherds tending their flocks, tightening their garments around them to fend off the cold. A homeless man rustles the newspapers over his head, tossing and turning on a park bench. A soldier in Iraq thinks of home while his family stares at an empty place at the Christmas table; meanwhile, a family down the street from the soldier also minds the spot vacated by a brother, or father, sister or mother, although they lack also the table and the food upon it. They look up at the sky and there is a single star, barely visible but clear high on the horizon. An angel of the LORD appears saying:
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Lk. 2: 10-11).
I want to jump up and shake the shoulders of the person next to me in excitement, returning to Isaiah's incredible words of hope. There are so many other great passages in his lengthy text, but surely we cannot ignore these:
“For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Is. 2: 3-4).
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse...He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of fear of the LORD...The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Is. 11: 1, 3-4. 6).
Let us not mistake what the prophets are telling us. There is a great hope to take hold of, but it is not in the gods we would forge for ourselves. If we order our personal lives to serve the god of wealth or if collectively we order our society to serve the god of power or “national pride” let it be known that we will be slaves to these gods. When the palaces of riches we build to these gods crumble, as they inevitably will, will they hear our cries or take hold of our outstretched hands?
In Israel's time of despair and need its cries did not go unheard. Although God set out to punish Israel and Judah for its wrongdoing, God offers to them assurance of restoration:
“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt – a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31: 31-34).
Today, on Christmas Eve, we remember the night in which the shepherds were witness to the coming of the new covenant in the person of Jesus Christ who wrote God's Law of love, grace and mercy “on our hearts.” God made Godself available to all of us so that we might know God, from the least to the greatest of us.
As we continue to stumble around in the darkness, God continues to be faithful to this new thing God has done, this new covenant. In all the dark nights of our lives and in the world, we are thus sustained by a single, bright star of hope shining in the night sky above us. We are able to confidently declare that God has come to dwell among us and that God's Kingdom is coming.
What then are we to do? Our first passage from Isaiah gives us some clues.
What mountains in our world and in our lives will God make low, what rough places will God smooth out?
Have we stopped to take in the glory of the LORD with all people?
A voice cries out! In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!
In our wilderness, let us build roads for God's Kingdom, let us cry out that a new dawn is coming.
Each year I gauge my sense of the coming holiday season by how much everything “seems like Christmas.” Whether it's the smell of cookies baking in the oven, twinkling lights and green garland in the living room or all my favorite carols playing in the background, I look to such signs to know that it's really Christmas time. However, the weeks leading up to Christmas should properly be identified as exactly what they are – the time of Advent, or the Coming of the Messiah.
One of my favorite things about Advent is the chance to hear the words of the great prophets of the LORD. Only in recent weeks have I taken the time to really experience all the prophets have to say about the condition of the nation of Israel, God's chosen people, and how their words apply equally to our own times. I want to share some of my favorite texts from two of the prophets, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and how I believe they have much to say about Advent and Christmas and what they ought to mean in our lives today.
But first, let us explore the more familiar, reassuring words of Isaiah often used during Advent:
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins. A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken” (Is. 40: 1-5).
It is very difficult to understand the deep meaning of these words without knowing the depths from which the prophet is speaking. The nation of Israel has divided into Northern and Southern Kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom is being destroyed and conquered and Judah is not far away from the same fate (which it will, of course, suffer at the hands of Babylon). The land given to Israel as promised by the God who led them out of bondage in Egypt was being taken from them. The Temple, the very dwelling place of the One True God, was in danger of being sacked by pagans and carried off piecemeal to distant capitals. Without going much further into detail, it was as if God had abandoned God's people and was nowhere to be found. The foundation of Israel's existence seemed in question.
Naturally, God's covenant people wondered why this was going on and most surely lifted appeal after appeal to God for mercy, or even any sign at all. God's answer was not always so “comforting.”
Through the prophet Jeremiah, God declares “Because your guilt is great, because your sins are so numerous, I have done these things to you...The fierce anger of the LORD will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his mind” (Jer. 30: 15,24).
By what law does God convict the nation of Israel? It is Torah, the Law given to Moses and written on stone tablets at Mount Sinai. Chief among Israel's sin is its faithlessness to worship God alone. Jeremiah reflects God's anguish and anger directed toward Israel's worship of other gods using not-so-subtle imagery of marriage infidelity:
“On every high hill and under every green tree you sprawled and played the whore...know what you have done – a restive young camel interlacing her tracks, a wild ass at home in the wilderness, in her heat sniffing the wind! Who can restrain her lust? None who seek her need weary themselves; in her month they will find her” (Jer. 2: 20, 23-24).
After this comparison it is no wonder the powers that be put Jeremiah in chains and locked him up! The prophet is clear that the people have themselves to blame for their despair:
“But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them come, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for you have as many gods as you have towns, O Judah” (Jer. 2:28).
Who are the 'other gods' to whom we often direct our hopes and the focus of our energies, skills and possessions, when all these belong to the One God who created both them and us? Perhaps they also are as numerous as the cities where we raise up idols in place of the LORD and “do not defend the rights of the needy” (Jer. 5:28). I need not list them, for we all can peer into our lives and take a glance at our society to find them in abundance.
This is not the stuff of Christmas cheer and warm baking cookies, yet it is precisely the point in history and now, in our lives, at which God chooses to inject Godself into the world.
I like to imagine a dark, cold night not unlike the one Luke describes with shepherds tending their flocks, tightening their garments around them to fend off the cold. A homeless man rustles the newspapers over his head, tossing and turning on a park bench. A soldier in Iraq thinks of home while his family stares at an empty place at the Christmas table; meanwhile, a family down the street from the soldier also minds the spot vacated by a brother, or father, sister or mother, although they lack also the table and the food upon it. They look up at the sky and there is a single star, barely visible but clear high on the horizon. An angel of the LORD appears saying:
“Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Lk. 2: 10-11).
I want to jump up and shake the shoulders of the person next to me in excitement, returning to Isaiah's incredible words of hope. There are so many other great passages in his lengthy text, but surely we cannot ignore these:
“For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Is. 2: 3-4).
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse...He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of fear of the LORD...The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Is. 11: 1, 3-4. 6).
Let us not mistake what the prophets are telling us. There is a great hope to take hold of, but it is not in the gods we would forge for ourselves. If we order our personal lives to serve the god of wealth or if collectively we order our society to serve the god of power or “national pride” let it be known that we will be slaves to these gods. When the palaces of riches we build to these gods crumble, as they inevitably will, will they hear our cries or take hold of our outstretched hands?
In Israel's time of despair and need its cries did not go unheard. Although God set out to punish Israel and Judah for its wrongdoing, God offers to them assurance of restoration:
“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt – a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31: 31-34).
Today, on Christmas Eve, we remember the night in which the shepherds were witness to the coming of the new covenant in the person of Jesus Christ who wrote God's Law of love, grace and mercy “on our hearts.” God made Godself available to all of us so that we might know God, from the least to the greatest of us.
As we continue to stumble around in the darkness, God continues to be faithful to this new thing God has done, this new covenant. In all the dark nights of our lives and in the world, we are thus sustained by a single, bright star of hope shining in the night sky above us. We are able to confidently declare that God has come to dwell among us and that God's Kingdom is coming.
What then are we to do? Our first passage from Isaiah gives us some clues.
What mountains in our world and in our lives will God make low, what rough places will God smooth out?
Have we stopped to take in the glory of the LORD with all people?
A voice cries out! In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!
In our wilderness, let us build roads for God's Kingdom, let us cry out that a new dawn is coming.
Choices and Priorities This November
***I AM JUST TRANSFERRING THIS FROM ELSEWHERE, IT WAS ACTUALLY FIRST POSTED ON OCTOBER 19, 2008***
Perhaps in no other election year in my lifetime have Americans faced a choice with such potentially far-reaching consequences. I personally feel the choice is between a candidate with a vision to lead our people into the economic and political challenges of a new century and an honorable servant of our country who unfortunately has few ideas to address a changed world. Others most certainly cast the choice in a different light.
However, it is at times like this one that we ought to examine our priorities as a nation, or more importantly, as people. I suppose it is not a surprise that I interpret our political realm in the context of the spiritual. Questions of political leadership and sovereignty have been asked as long as questions about the divine and the answers have often been intertwined.
The history of judges, kings and Israel's desire for an earthly king to lead them to glory as recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures is ripe with comparisons to be drawn between worldly and divine leadership. I have neither the textual or historical authority, nor the time, to fully develop them here. Suffice it to say that God offered to the Israelites through Samuel a stern warning of the consequences of being subject to a worldly king.
“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8: 11-18)
And yet the Israelites chose for themselves a king, receiving perhaps one or two good monarchs in David and Solomon and centuries of subjection and persecution at the hands of a series of conquerors. The great petitions and laments of the nation of Israel were composed as God's chosen people awaited the coming of the Messiah who would return them to glory.
Of course, the Messiah arrived not in a triumphant procession or at the head of an army, but as a child born in a stable to a poor family in a quiet hamlet of Judah. The entire life and teaching of Jesus is one in which God turns the conventional wisdom of the world on its head. Conveniently, this week's lectionary leads us to Matthew's account of the Pharisees' attempt to trap Jesus in the question of whether it was right to pay taxes to the Roman emperor. If he said they should not pay them he would subject himself to the Roman authorities and if he said they were lawful, he was guilty of blaspheming against the one true God. Referring to a Roman denarius used to pay the tax, Jesus confounds them with a line for the ages:
“He said to them, 'Whose head is this, and whose title?' They answered, 'the emperor's.' Then he said to them, 'Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's.'” (Matthew 22: 20-21)
This question immediately leads us to another – what belongs to the emperor, or in our case, the government or any government, and what belongs to God?
Christians believe that in his faithfulness and obedience on the cross, Christ has forever won us all for his own. He has freed us from the weight of sin which would otherwise hold us captive. In Baptism he claims us as children of God, bound together by his love into the Body of Christ.
The apostle Paul made excellent use of the idea of Roman citizenship, turning the image on its head to emphasize that the true citizenship is the one we all share as the people of God. The one sovereign is not the Roman emperor but the Lord. If this is true, then what is the role of worldly political authority?
Although it can be perverted into an institution intended to replace the divine, it ought to be viewed as a gift of God like everything else on this earth. Civil administration checks our basest impulses, orders our society and provides for common welfare. I will defer to Thomas Jefferson and the great minds of political philosophy to expound upon the purposes and benefits of democratic political institutions. As Americans, we are blessed to have such political and economic liberties.
The crucial idea to maintain is that we do not belong to George Bush and we will not belong to Barack Obama or John McCain (and thank God not to Congress either). God holds title to our souls, not our government, and I am very thankful for it.
Keeping this distinction in mind may help us to see certain problems in a different light. Governmental institutions are not ends in themselves nor are they sovereign in their own right. They exist to make our shared lives and interactions easier. As such, I hope that ultimately we will be able to realize they are not worth the death of so many nor the sacrifice of compassion toward God's people for other human-established economic or political interests.
I realize I tread on very fine ground with that statement and in no way do I seek to dishonor the sacrifice of all those who fought to establish and maintain the political freedoms I enjoy. They gave their lives for this country and the reality of it is that without their sacrifice, courage and selflessness (exactly the qualities Christians should espouse) we would not live with the blessing of such liberty.
What I am trying to say is that the sacrifices made for this country or any country do not presuppose that the political entities for which such sacrifices were made will always be worthy of them. The willingness to serve is a truly noble and honorable quality of many in our society and it is God who enables us to such acts in faith and compassion. Nevertheless, if our political institutions do not merit our service then they do not hold claim to it. Once again I stress that our government cannot assume the allegiance of our souls as it belongs to God alone, the creator and redeemer of all.
The United States of America is most certainly a blessing of God, a nation unparalleled in history which has made basic political and economic freedoms the global standard rather than the exception. It is also true that the sins committed in the name of the U.S.A., while perhaps less extensive than that of some previous or contemporary political entities, are too grievous to even summarize. The United States, like every other empire, kingdom or nation before it, will eventually outlive its usefulness in the eyes of its citizens. My prayer is that it will be succeeded by an institution which will extend its liberties to a greater potion of God's people and work to further respect the fundamental value of every human being. It should be remembered that this value is derived from the fact that we are all unique creations of God, all claimed by our Lord Jesus Christ as his own.
In the meantime, I believe we would do well to keep in mind our common citizenship with all humanity, both inside and outside our nation. We have a hard enough time remembering our ties to the forgotten within our borders. Fears of terrorism, economic competition and cultural and racial insensitivity all make it pretty difficult to conceive of these ties outside our borders as well. We are just flawed, imperfect and sinful human beings, but we are at the same time justified, unified and made whole by Christ. We are capable of more than it seems, although you and I already know it won't be easy. I obviously do not claim to have all the answers but I maintain that we can work out our faith in acts of love whatever our vocation.
I have had the blessing to visit some of the poorest people in the world in the astonishingly beautiful wilderness of Zambia this past spring. Sharing life with them for two weeks – their food, their homes, their work, their children, their stories, their hopes, their smiles – was enough to cement my conviction of our shared inheritance in Christ. No experience has so confirmed our common citizenship than our worship together in which we gave thanks and praise for that very time together as well as the myriad blessings we share.
This November I will cast my vote for Barack Obama, but rest assured my hopes do not lie in his eyes alone but in the eyes of all my brothers and sisters in Christ with whom I share a stake in the kingdom of God.
Perhaps in no other election year in my lifetime have Americans faced a choice with such potentially far-reaching consequences. I personally feel the choice is between a candidate with a vision to lead our people into the economic and political challenges of a new century and an honorable servant of our country who unfortunately has few ideas to address a changed world. Others most certainly cast the choice in a different light.
However, it is at times like this one that we ought to examine our priorities as a nation, or more importantly, as people. I suppose it is not a surprise that I interpret our political realm in the context of the spiritual. Questions of political leadership and sovereignty have been asked as long as questions about the divine and the answers have often been intertwined.
The history of judges, kings and Israel's desire for an earthly king to lead them to glory as recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures is ripe with comparisons to be drawn between worldly and divine leadership. I have neither the textual or historical authority, nor the time, to fully develop them here. Suffice it to say that God offered to the Israelites through Samuel a stern warning of the consequences of being subject to a worldly king.
“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8: 11-18)
And yet the Israelites chose for themselves a king, receiving perhaps one or two good monarchs in David and Solomon and centuries of subjection and persecution at the hands of a series of conquerors. The great petitions and laments of the nation of Israel were composed as God's chosen people awaited the coming of the Messiah who would return them to glory.
Of course, the Messiah arrived not in a triumphant procession or at the head of an army, but as a child born in a stable to a poor family in a quiet hamlet of Judah. The entire life and teaching of Jesus is one in which God turns the conventional wisdom of the world on its head. Conveniently, this week's lectionary leads us to Matthew's account of the Pharisees' attempt to trap Jesus in the question of whether it was right to pay taxes to the Roman emperor. If he said they should not pay them he would subject himself to the Roman authorities and if he said they were lawful, he was guilty of blaspheming against the one true God. Referring to a Roman denarius used to pay the tax, Jesus confounds them with a line for the ages:
“He said to them, 'Whose head is this, and whose title?' They answered, 'the emperor's.' Then he said to them, 'Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's.'” (Matthew 22: 20-21)
This question immediately leads us to another – what belongs to the emperor, or in our case, the government or any government, and what belongs to God?
Christians believe that in his faithfulness and obedience on the cross, Christ has forever won us all for his own. He has freed us from the weight of sin which would otherwise hold us captive. In Baptism he claims us as children of God, bound together by his love into the Body of Christ.
The apostle Paul made excellent use of the idea of Roman citizenship, turning the image on its head to emphasize that the true citizenship is the one we all share as the people of God. The one sovereign is not the Roman emperor but the Lord. If this is true, then what is the role of worldly political authority?
Although it can be perverted into an institution intended to replace the divine, it ought to be viewed as a gift of God like everything else on this earth. Civil administration checks our basest impulses, orders our society and provides for common welfare. I will defer to Thomas Jefferson and the great minds of political philosophy to expound upon the purposes and benefits of democratic political institutions. As Americans, we are blessed to have such political and economic liberties.
The crucial idea to maintain is that we do not belong to George Bush and we will not belong to Barack Obama or John McCain (and thank God not to Congress either). God holds title to our souls, not our government, and I am very thankful for it.
Keeping this distinction in mind may help us to see certain problems in a different light. Governmental institutions are not ends in themselves nor are they sovereign in their own right. They exist to make our shared lives and interactions easier. As such, I hope that ultimately we will be able to realize they are not worth the death of so many nor the sacrifice of compassion toward God's people for other human-established economic or political interests.
I realize I tread on very fine ground with that statement and in no way do I seek to dishonor the sacrifice of all those who fought to establish and maintain the political freedoms I enjoy. They gave their lives for this country and the reality of it is that without their sacrifice, courage and selflessness (exactly the qualities Christians should espouse) we would not live with the blessing of such liberty.
What I am trying to say is that the sacrifices made for this country or any country do not presuppose that the political entities for which such sacrifices were made will always be worthy of them. The willingness to serve is a truly noble and honorable quality of many in our society and it is God who enables us to such acts in faith and compassion. Nevertheless, if our political institutions do not merit our service then they do not hold claim to it. Once again I stress that our government cannot assume the allegiance of our souls as it belongs to God alone, the creator and redeemer of all.
The United States of America is most certainly a blessing of God, a nation unparalleled in history which has made basic political and economic freedoms the global standard rather than the exception. It is also true that the sins committed in the name of the U.S.A., while perhaps less extensive than that of some previous or contemporary political entities, are too grievous to even summarize. The United States, like every other empire, kingdom or nation before it, will eventually outlive its usefulness in the eyes of its citizens. My prayer is that it will be succeeded by an institution which will extend its liberties to a greater potion of God's people and work to further respect the fundamental value of every human being. It should be remembered that this value is derived from the fact that we are all unique creations of God, all claimed by our Lord Jesus Christ as his own.
In the meantime, I believe we would do well to keep in mind our common citizenship with all humanity, both inside and outside our nation. We have a hard enough time remembering our ties to the forgotten within our borders. Fears of terrorism, economic competition and cultural and racial insensitivity all make it pretty difficult to conceive of these ties outside our borders as well. We are just flawed, imperfect and sinful human beings, but we are at the same time justified, unified and made whole by Christ. We are capable of more than it seems, although you and I already know it won't be easy. I obviously do not claim to have all the answers but I maintain that we can work out our faith in acts of love whatever our vocation.
I have had the blessing to visit some of the poorest people in the world in the astonishingly beautiful wilderness of Zambia this past spring. Sharing life with them for two weeks – their food, their homes, their work, their children, their stories, their hopes, their smiles – was enough to cement my conviction of our shared inheritance in Christ. No experience has so confirmed our common citizenship than our worship together in which we gave thanks and praise for that very time together as well as the myriad blessings we share.
This November I will cast my vote for Barack Obama, but rest assured my hopes do not lie in his eyes alone but in the eyes of all my brothers and sisters in Christ with whom I share a stake in the kingdom of God.
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