Saturday Night Theologian
4 September 2011

Exodus 12:1-14 (first published 4 September 2005)

Lodge brothers have secret handshakes with which to greet each other. Initiates of fraternities and sororities go through ceremonies and experiences that are designed to make them bond with one another. The Boy Scout induction ceremony into the Order of the Arrow is intended to make the inductees consider the honor being bestowed on them and its implications for daily living. Rituals are good when they draw people closer together and create a sense of community. We cannot relate to everyone in the world, or even everyone in our community, on an equal level, so the existence of small communities (whether physical or virtual) is both beneficial and necessary for human interaction. Rituals can become a problem, however, when they encourage an exaggerated "us vs. them" mentality that pits one group against another. The Passover ceremony was an important part of life within the ancient Israelite community, as it continues to be today. The Passover meal communicated many truths. First, it celebrated God's deliverance from bondage in Egypt. Second, it drew neighbors close together as they often shared a Passover lamb. Third, it reminded the people that they were a community, pledged to one another and to God. Fourth, it looked to the future in expectation that God would continue to deal faithfully with God's people. Fifth, it emphasized the importance of being prepared for a new work of God. Christians have traditionally adapted a portion of the Passover celebration as a remembrance and celebration of Christ's sacrifice, but many Christians today are looking again into the larger Passover celebration and finding meaning for their lives. There is great value in examining ancient Jewish rituals like Passover and celebrating them in our modern contexts, as long as we don't Christianize it so much that it loses most of its original meaning. I've seen Christian Passover celebrations in which a Jew would probably have had difficulty finding much value, because of the exclusive emphasis on the sacrifice of Jesus rather than the original exodus experience. Christians should certainly feel free to adapt the Passover celebration to our needs and beliefs, but at the same time we should remember that our Jewish brothers and sisters, who represent the tradition of our spiritual forebears (including Jesus), still find meaning in God's deliverance of their people from slavery, and we can do the same. God is still in the business of freeing people from oppression--physical, spiritual, emotional, and economic--and celebrating Passover can both give us hope of deliverance from our own woes and remind us of our obligation to side with God against the evils of oppression, wherever it might be found.

Psalm 149

When I lived in South Africa in the late 1980s, most Christians I knew, and most Muslims as well, were vocal opponents of the evil apartheid system that discriminated against people on the basis of the color of their skin. I was surprised, then, to find myself one day in a conversation with a man who was a leader in his church, and who suffered from discrimination himself, yet who believed that the church should stay out of the struggle against apartheid. It is the church's only business, he said, to praise God, and while Christians might pray for change, they should be wary of joining others in the struggle to implement actual change. I thought of this odd encounter when I read this week's reading from the Psalms, particularly verse 6: "Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands." The juxtaposition of praise and the call for justice may strike many people as strange, of even downright bizarre, but if is perfectly consistent with both the message of the prophets in the Old Testament and the example of Jesus in the New Testament. The psalmist says that the praise of God is meaningless without a commitment to justice. Or perhaps more accurately, a commitment to justice is an important component of the praise of God. Too often in our churches, particularly in countries where many people are relatively well off, the call for justice is strikingly absent from our pulpits and our classrooms. We think of Jesus' death on the cross only in terms of reconnecting individual sinners to God, not in terms of the great injustice that it was and that it speaks against. In a sense we are re-enacting the error of the South African man who refused to take a stand for justice, but we are in fact doing something much more insidious. While the South African man refused to participate in the struggle for justice that he suffered under, we refuse to participate in the struggle for justice that others face. He and his congregation risked their freedom, even their lives, if they raised their voices against oppression. We risk absolutely nothing. Standing up for justice is easy for us. There are no real consequences for doing so in most cases. Yet we still refuse to do so, despite biblical mandates like Psalm 149. There are exceptions, of course, individuals and churches (and synagogues and mosques) that pointedly stand on the side of the oppressed and against those individuals, corporations, institutions, and governments that oppress them. Most Americans have cheered the so-called Arab spring, which has seen the overthrow of oppressive regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, and now Libya, because we innately understand the desire for freedom from oppression. Yet most churches say too little, far too little, about the continuing suffering of so many in our own country: those without jobs, without health care, without shelter, without food, those who continue to suffer from discrimination, those who flounder in poverty with no way out, those without meaningful access to higher education. No, we don't live under an oppressive dictatorship like so many in the world do, but that's even more reason to show a little courage and speak out against the injustice around us. It's one more way, a vital way, to praise God.

Romans 13:8-14 (first published 4 September 2005)

One of the common caricatures of Christianity is that it is a religion whose main rule is "Thou shalt not!" Unfortunately, this is also sometimes the way that Christians themselves think of their religion. As the old saying goes, "I don't drink, dance, smoke, or chew, or go out with girls that do." The problem with defining Christianity in terms of the rejection of certain types of behavior is that it paints a picture of the religion that is predominantly negative. Some people think that a Christianity that is characterized by a list of don'ts is too hard to follow. I think it is too easy. "Thou shalt not kill" is easy to do; "love your enemy" is not. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" is easy to do; "forgive those who wrong you" is not. "Thou shalt not steal" is easy to do; "give all you have to the poor" is not. A Christianity that focuses on the don'ts can too easily congratulate itself on its paltry accomplishments. "No one in our congregation has broken any of the Ten Commandments in the past year," someone might say. Fine, but how many in your congregation supported politicians who rob from the poor to give to the rich? "Nobody who's a member of our church drinks or smokes." Good, but how many support international policies that result in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people? A Christianity that focuses on the "Thou shalt nots" is a pale shadow of true Christianity, which focuses on what Christians are called to do, not to not do. Paul understood the problem with seeing religion as a list of things not to do, because he had been there himself. Rather than focus on the negatives, Paul says, we should focus on the positive, specifically, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." When we love our neighbor, how will we act? We certainly won't kill him, but we'll do much more than that. If we love our neighbor, we'll become his friend. We'll talk to her and learn the names of her children. We'll help him take a couch to Goodwill. We'll watch her daughter when she's running late at work. We'll help out if he gets sick or loses his job. We'll send money to help if she loses her home in a hurricane. We'll open the doors of our country and our houses to him and his family if he has to flee a storm, or a dictator, or extreme poverty. It's easier to avoid various vices than to actively show God's love to another person. What kind of Christianity do we follow?

Matthew 18:15-20 (first published 4 September 2005)

In the run-up to the 2004 presidential elections, some Roman Catholic bishops proclaimed that priests should refuse to offer communion to politicians (i.e., John Kerry) who supported abortion rights, apparently regardless of those people's precise position on the subject. Presumably such a pronouncement was based on a passage such as today's reading from Matthew, in which Jesus instructs his followers to admonish a sinner first privately and then, if he doesn't repent, publicly. The problem with the bishops' proclamation was that it focused on one particular position, that coincidentally happened to be one that most Democrats supported, while ignoring numerous ethical breaches that many Republicans favored (e.g., preemptive wars without international mandates, tax cuts for the rich, refusal to provide universal health care). What is the proper role of the church in public policy debates? First, we should acknowledge that almost every public policy involves ethical issues that Christianity should take a stand on. Second, we should admit that not all Christians will agree with our analysis of the issues or of scriptural or ecclesiastical teaching. Third, we should speak out boldly and prophetically, though always with humility, because we understand that we do not have a corner on the market of truth. Fourth, we should never, ever presume to expel people from the church unless a very large majority of Christians agrees with our position; even then, admonition and counsel will usually be preferable to expulsion. I find many of the current U.S. administration's policies, both domestic and international, to be contrary to the letter and spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and I am not afraid to say so (as regular readers have no doubt noticed). However, I would never presume to say that "so-and-so" is not a real Christian, or "so-and-so" should be excluded from the church. On the contrary, I hope that those political leaders and other public figures with whom I sharply disagree with continue to attend church, synagogue, mosque, or temple, because I believe that, if their position on an issue is wrong, God may be able to penetrate their defenses through worship. Another thing to keep in mind when dealing with the implications of religious thought and practice on public policy is that theology is not determined democratically. In the free church tradition, in which I was raised, church polity is congregational, which means that congregations vote and the majority rules. However, the majority is sometimes wrong. Members of the religious right and proponents of extremely conservative and fundamentalist forms of Christianity may outnumber progressive Christians (I say "may," because I don't know the statistics, and I'm not sure anyone really does), but that doesn't make their position right, any more than the election of an absolute Nazi majority in the 1933 elections in Germany made Nazi ideals right. It is time for progressive Christians to speak out. Fundamentalists have no qualms about expressing their views, and neither should we, especially since our views are based firmly (we believe) in the teaching of scripture, in our view of God, and in the message of the gospel.