Saturday Night Theologian
10 October 2004

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

Many Christians today rail against postmodernism with a vengeance (many of these also continue to attack modernism!). They fear the rise of "secular humanism." They are opposed to religious pluralism. They react in various ways: advocating legislation to impose their beliefs on others, taking over local school boards in order to change the curriculum of the schools, pulling their children out of public school and putting them in fundamentalist-run private schools or home schools, backing political candidates who advocate a far-right cultural agenda. Many are basically good people who are afraid of changes in the world around them, changes that they believe threaten the very core of Christianity. Forty years ago Harvey Cox wrote a groundbreaking analysis of the place of the church in society called The Secular City. Far from urging Christians to pull out of the city, he urged them to study it, to be involved in it, and to embrace it. Yes, it has its flaws, as every society throughout history has had, but it has great potential as well. The prophet Jeremiah had seen one group of exiles from Jerusalem taken to Babylonia, and he knew that even worse was in store for the city he loved. Yet despite his affection for Jerusalem, he knew that it was already the past: Babylonia was the immediate future for the Jews. He wrote a letter to the exiles, telling them that because they would remain in Babylonia for a long time, they should integrate themselves into the fabric of the society. "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease." Jeremiah didn't want them to hole up and wait out the storm. Instead, they were to live their lives as individuals and as a community. It is important to note that Jeremiah did not advocate that they accept all the views and practices of the Babylonians, for to do so would be to abandon who they were as Jews. However, he did want them to learn about the society in which they lived, participate in it, and get on with life. Furthermore, they were to "seek the welfare of the city" where they were living in exile. That is, without necessarily abandoning their concern for Jerusalem, they were to ally themselves in spirit with the city of the Babylonians, for that was now their home. Christians today no longer live in the "modern" world of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, much less the Christendom of the Middle Ages. Those periods had some good features, but they also had many bad features. Regardless, they are now part of the past, and we now live in the postmodern world, though strong currents of modernism remain. This is the world we live in, and Christians need to live in it, embrace it, learn to love it, seeks its welfare, and figure out how to be prophetic Christians in it. These are exciting times, though they may also be frightening times, too. But if we will seek the welfare of the city we live in, God will bless us in all we do.

Psalm 66:1-12

One of the most powerful stories in the Bible is the story of the exodus, the delivery of the children of Israel from bondage in Egypt. In addition to the original account in the book of Exodus (or at least two versions of the account that have been combined, if you follow the results of source criticism), the exodus is recounted in several psalms, the prophets, and the New Testament. In addition to retellings of the story, the imagery of the exodus is used to refer to the return of exiles from Babylonia, the birth of Jesus, and the salvation brought about by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Today's psalm reading recounts the story of the exodus, in particular the crossing of the sea, as a metaphor for God's deliverance of his people in other contexts. It is important for us as believers to retell stories that speak of God's deliverance of God's people. First, it reminds us of God's work in the past. Second, it gives us hope for the future. The exodus is a story of deliverance of a poor, oppressed people from a heartless tyrant. It is not surprising, then, that people in Third World countries often use the exodus story to express their hopes that God will deliver them from their oppressors. Sometimes those oppressors are their own governments. Sometimes their oppressors are great Western powers. Sometimes oppression is the result of structural injustice that is built into the system by which the international community often operates, for example, the policies of the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. The G7, the leading economic powers in the world, met this week to discuss relieving Third World debt, and though a consensus was reached that some level of debt relief was necessary, they were unable to reach a final accord on the matter. It was a missed opportunity to offer a measure of hope, a measure of deliverance to a huge number of oppressed people. It is not enough to say that God will ultimately deliver the people, for God expects those who claim to be believers to act in God's name. How does God deliver people today? God delivers people through the actions of others. That doesn't mean that God doesn't deserve the praise, since people are involved. On the contrary, getting people and nations to overcome their natural selfishness and put the needs of others before their own short-term self-interest can only be done by a change of heart, and only God can change people's hearts. So with the psalmist let us make a joyful noise to God, and with Moses let us do what we can to bring deliverance to the oppressed in God's name.

2 Timothy 2:8-15

John Bunyan was a preacher who believed that God called him to proclaim the gospel message to all who would listen. Because he wasn't licensed to preach the gospel by the dominant religious group, Bunyan spent several years in prison. While there, he wrote a religious allegory second only to the Bible in popularity among Christian readers, The Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan himself was chained, but the word of God was not chained. In today's lectionary reading, Paul describes his situation of imprisonment. Arrested and held in confinement for preaching a message that was different from that of the recognized religions of the day, Paul continued to preach the gospel even among his captors. Paul was chained, but the word of God was not chained. As progressive Christians, we often find ourselves in settings where our interpretation of the gospel is not in complete agreement with the majority of our fellow worshipers. At other times we find our views in conflict with those who exercise religious authority of one kind or another. When we find ourselves in such a situation, we can choose to remain silent and defer to majority opinion or to authority figures, or we can speak up confidently, yet graciously and respectfully. Both Bunyan and Paul chose to speak up when given the opportunity, because they each believed that their own understandings of the gospel were valid and, moreover, would speak to the hearts of their hearers. Christianity has never been a religion of purely inward meditation or a religion intended only for private expression. From the beginning God has called preachers to spread the gospel message. Along the way the gospel has often been perverted, or diluted, and people have always had to interpret the gospel in the light of their own personal experiences and beliefs. Because we realize that our understanding grows out of our own personal context, we must always listen carefully to the understanding of others, even those with whom we disagree. In the end, though, the truth of the gospel is not determined by majority vote, nor is it determined by religious authority figures. Both can be wrong, and both have been wrong many times. If we do face restraints that prevent us from presenting our message as forcefully or as widely as we would like, let's make sure that none of those restraints are chains that we voluntarily take upon ourselves because of timidity or unwarranted deference to the authority of others. Speak up. You might be surprised at the positive response you'll get!

Luke 17:11-19

In his book When Religion Becomes Evil, Charles Kimball concludes by discussing three different Christian approaches to dealing with people of other faiths. The first approach is exclusivism, the belief that "Jesus Christ provides the only valid way to salvation." The second is inclusivism, which "affirms both the saving presence and activity of God in all religious traditions and the full, definitive revelation of God in Jesus Christ." The third position is pluralism, whose adherents "see Christianity neither as the only means to salvation nor as the fulfillment of other religious traditions . , . [but affirm] the viability of various paths." Even within the traditional, exclusivist position, Kimball notes different attitudes toward other religions, ranging from the "hard" position of absolute certainty regarding the exclusion of people of other faiths from God's family to a softer position that acknowledges a lack of full knowledge concerning the extent of the family of God. Luke tells the story of ten lepers who met Jesus on his way to Jerusalem. Jesus told them to go present themselves to the priests, but one, when he saw that he had indeed been healed, returned, fell at Jesus' feet, and thanked him profusely. The kicker to the story is that the man who returned was a Samaritan. Modern interpreters often point out the attitude of Jews toward Samaritans on account of their supposedly "mixed" ancestry, but what is not as often discussed is the fact that Samaritan religious beliefs were quite different from those of the Jews in some respects, and Samaritanism could be considered a different religion from Judaism. For example, Samaritans accepted only the Pentateuch as scripture, and their version of the Pentateuch differed in details (some fairly significant) from that of the Jews. Samaritans didn't accept the idea of a Davidic messiah (though they did look for a messiah-like deliverer called the Taeb, who would be a prophet like Moses). Jesus acknowledged the Samaritan's faith and praised him for it. It is clear that Jesus valued faith in God and action above membership in a particular group. (In Matthew and Mark, Jesus praises the faith of the Syrophoenician or Canaanite woman, a Gentile.) Contemporary Christians who contemplate the proper attitude to take with regard to people of other faiths should consider Jesus' attitude toward non-Jews who exhibit faith. Although there is certainly room for difference of opinion among Christians of a progressive stripe on this issue, we must certainly agree that Jesus' example rules out the strictest form of exclusivism from consideration.