Saturday Night Theologian
28 August 2011

Exodus 3:1-15 (first published 28 August 2005)

Have you ever had an experience of the divine that was so real to you that you were left breathless, filled with awe, or broken down in tears? If you've had such as experience, how did it affect your subsequent behavior? I've known people who claim to have had profound encounters with God, and their lives changed for awhile, but fairly soon thereafter they were back in their old patterns of living, that is, living primarily for themselves. I've also known people whose lives changed forever after an encounter with God. I can't say whether one experience was real while the other was imagined, or even whether both were imagined on some level, but I can take note of lives that have changed for the better. Moses' encounter with God took place not in a cathedral or temple, not at a religious festival or a time of sacrifice, but in a remote place, "beyond the wilderness," at the foot of a mountain. Some people find special significance in specific places, believing them to be sacred sites. I respect their beliefs, but for me, God can appear anywhere, in any form, so everywhere is potentially sacred ground. Mt. Horeb was sacred to Moses because he experienced God there, but I have places that are sacred, or at least special, to me, because I have experienced God in those places. In fact, some of the "places" aren't really places at all, but rather phenomena, like a thunderstorm rolling in over the hills. I think it's good for us to have sacred places of our own, places where we have experienced God before, perhaps not as vividly as Moses' experience with the burning bush, but real just the same. However, our focus should not be on the sacred site per se but instead on the message that God conveys through an encounter with us. The central message that comes from Moses' encounter with God is that God is faithful to those who trust in God. The statement "I am who I am" suggests God's consistency in dealing with humanity. So does "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Just as God has demonstrated faithfulness in the past to Moses' ancestor, so God will be faithful in the present to Moses' people. In what way will God be faithful, and why is God appearing to Moses in the first place? "I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them up out of that land." God is concerned about justice, and God plans to act to bring it about. Throughout the ages oppressed people have cried out to God, and God has delivered them. It is no different today. The powerful who oppress the poor and think they are exempt from God's judgment because of their wealth or their military might had better think again. God is opposed to the oppressors and sides with the oppressed. How does God's preferential treatment of the poor and oppressed tie back into our discussion about sacred places? God says to Moses, "This shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain." When God chooses to appear in a theophany, God speaks to those who are part of the divine plan, especially those who have already been faithful in the past or those whom God intends to integrate into the divine plan. Sacred spaces, then, are for the faithful people of God. The poor and the outcast find refuge in those places where God's presence is felt most strongly: churches, temples, mountains, seashores, and other places. By contrast, those who opposed God's work in the world cannot hope to find comfort in sacred spaces, only admonishment and a challenge to repent. Not all churches are sacred spaces, for not all churches proclaim God's message of hope to the outcast, but all churches--and synagogues, mosques, and temples--have the potential of becoming sacred places of worship and refuge. It isn't holy water, or traditional ritual, or sacred words pronounced over a site that make it holy, significant as those acts may be. A place becomes sacred when people can encounter the divine there in a powerful and life-changing way and then go from there to continue God's work in the world.

Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c (first published 28 August 2005)

When my family lived in South Africa for a little more than a year in the late 1980s, I had my first experience of being a stranger in a strange land. First, the color of my skin (white) made me a minority in a country where more than 80% of the people had black skin. Second, our accents made us readily identifiable as Americans, so we often got strange looks in stores and on the streets. Our experience in South Africa was very good, and people were very hospitable to us, but we could never completely shake the feeling that we were aliens there. If we felt that way, I can only imagine how our black friends there felt. They were born in the land and grew up there, yet they were marginalized and denied equality, so they were in effect aliens in the land of their birth. There are many reasons for people to become aliens in a foreign land. Some leave their homeland to search for better economic opportunities for themselves and their families. Some emigrate in search of greater freedoms. Some flee their homeland to escape punishment or persecution. Some go to a new land because they prefer its culture, its natural resources, or its ambience. Psalm 105 says that "Jacob lived as an alien in the land of Ham." Ham is used as an element of synonymous parallelism to correspond to Egypt in the first half of the verse, just as Israel corresponds with Jacob, but it also carries the connotation of the "curse of Ham" from Genesis 9:20-27 (actually the curse of Canaan in the present form of the text, though an earlier tradition probably referred to Ham instead). The effect of this verse upon the hearer or reader was that it conjured up negative feelings toward the Egyptians among whom the Israelites resided as aliens. Of course, they had good reason to have negative feelings, given the oppression that ensued when "a king arose who didn't know Joseph." However, we must also remember that Jacob and his family voluntarily sought refuge in Egypt, and the Egyptian king honored them and gave them some of the best land available. The interaction between Israel and Egypt, then, is complex, just as is the interaction between citizens and aliens today. Citizens like to be able to hire aliens for substandard wages, and they also like that taxes that aliens pump into the system. Citizens don't like losing their jobs to aliens or their descendants, and they are often opposed to tax revenues being spent to support aliens who need help. On an interpersonal level, aliens often blend in with their community, particularly when a large number of citizens from the same country or ethnic group live nearby. When they don't blend in, bad things often happen. This week a fire in a residential hotel in Paris killed at least 20 people. Because the hotel was inhabited almost solely by immigrants and other foreigners, and because of a similar suspicious fire several months ago, some people suspect arson motivated by anti-immigrant prejudice, perhaps directed especially African immigrants (the large majority of the immigrants in the hotel were from Africa). In contrast, Israel has always welcomed Jews from other countries with open arms, though their treatment of Israeli Arabs and Palestinian workers has been less than welcoming. Australia has traditionally welcomed immigrants, but anti-immigrant feeling is growing there, particularly among people of European descent, who are wary of the growing number of Asians moving into the country. The lesson I would like to draw from this reading is that citizens of a country should welcome immigrants like brothers and sisters, like fellow children of God, which they are. Whatever their reasons for coming, they undertook a difficult journey, and they deserve our support, not our opposition. Rather than lining the border between Mexico and the U.S. with vigilantes with guns, Christians should welcome those seeking a better life with open arms. The principle behind this approach is obvious: if we were immigrants in a foreign country, how would we want to be treated?

Romans 12:9-21

The older I get, the closer I come to being a pacifist. Jesus' command to love one's enemies seems the very antithesis of waging war against another nation. On the other hand, when I see a brutal dictator overthrown, as happened this week with Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, as throughout the Arab Spring and Summer, I'm happy for the people of that country. I don't believe there is such a thing as a just war, regardless of the long Christian tradition of the just war theory. All so-called "just wars" in my opinion are really nothing more than "justified wars," wars undertaken for some selfish, nationalistic reason, and rationalized and sold to the citizens of the aggressor nation on some other basis. Nevertheless, I think that force is sometimes justified. Paul says, "If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." The problem is when peace is not possible. The primary reason that peace might not be possible, on an international scale, is when one country attacks another. The attacked country has the right of self-defense, so I've never understood why Iraqi soldiers, for example, were sometimes portrayed in the media as being unjustified when they engaged in combat with U.S. troops. Is war, then, an intractable problem for Christian theology? Is it sometimes inevitable? I don't think so. The problem is that there are unjust regimes around the world that the international community allows to thrive for so long that only a large, armed conflict can rectify the situation. If there were laws and institutions in place to ensure justice, or something approximating justice--basic human rights, food, clothing, shelter, access to health care and education--existed on a global scale, war would cease to be an inevitability. That would require international political structures with real authority, with the threat of force (i.e., a police force) to carry it out, and we are nowhere near that at this point in the history of the world. So what should Christians concerned about following the example of Jesus do? Several things: (1) work to resolve conflicts in our communities and around the world peacefully, whenever possible--and it's usually possible; (2) support the sharing of resources with those who need them, wherever they are in the world; (3) advocate the free movement of people looking for work, better opportunities for their families, or just a change of scenery, across international borders if that is what they want; (4) see ourselves, and everyone else, as citizens of the world, with our primarily political allegiance to the global welfare of all, and only secondary allegiance to our individual countries. When these dreams are realized, and only then, world peace will truly be a possibility.

Matthew 16:21-28 (first published 28 August 2005)

There's a Wizard of Id cartoon that shows the cowardly knight Rodney about to go on an undercover mission. The courtiers make sure he has his armor, his disguise, and his spear. Then one of them offers him a suicide pill to take in case he's captured. "Don't bother to give him that," says that Wizard. "He'll never be captured." Like brave, brave Sir Robin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Rodney is the type who will run away at the first sign of danger. We're often a lot like Rodney and Sir Robin. We're fearless when planning our battle strategy, but when it comes to implementing it, fear sets in. Jesus' disciples were just like we are. They liked the idea of following a royal messiah, but they didn't want him to become a suffering servant, primarily because of the implications for them as disciples. Jesus understood their hesitancy, but he was never one to beat around the bush: "If any want to become by followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me." Jesus doesn't call us to carry his cross but to carry our own crosses. The Christian walk is characterized by joy, but it's also fraught with danger. It's easy to live parts of the Christian life, particularly in a country that thinks of itself as Christian. It's hard, however, to be a Christian when our co-workers are ridiculing us or when our neighbors are questioning our positions on burning social issues. But Christianity isn't about partial commitments or half-hearted obedience. As Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." It is probably that few of us will be called upon to die because of our beliefs, though it is possible, but it is quite likely that our beliefs, when they are translated into action, will make us unpopular or perhaps even hated. If we're not ready for that, we're not ready to follow the call of Christ.