The declining influence of a biblical worldview, even among people
who claim to be adherents of "traditional Judeo-Christian values," is
evident everywhere in the modern world, from the increasingly
destructive wars we fight, to the lack of concern for children dying of
poverty and preventable disease, to the decision of powerful nations to
maximize short-term profit at the expense of future generations by
refusing to deal with the imminent threat of global warming. And this
reduced power to affect human action applies not just on the global
scale but on the small scale as well, perhaps most obviously in the
rejection of forgiveness as an expression of virtue and its
transformation in the minds of many into a object of derision. People
ostentatiously attend church on Sunday, then on Wednesday they cheer the
promise that criminals who have been convicted of committing heinous
crimes will be put to death. They applaud the incarceration and
deportation of those who came to this country "illegally" (as if
searching for a better life for oneself and one's family were a crime),
even going to the extreme of trying to strip their American-born
children of their citizenship. They urge their leaders to take the
harshest possible actions against nations whose citizens--perhaps only a
small handful of them, or perhaps even citizens of another nation--have
perpetrated violence against American cities. Forgiveness is seen as a
characteristic of the weak rather than a virtue of the strong. The
sixth century prophet whose words are preserved in the book of Isaiah
has a different take on forgiveness: "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." Like
many of his contemporaries, he interpreted the destruction of the
Jerusalem temple and the deportation of Judah's leading citizens fifty
years earlier as God's just punishment of the nation. The message that
God is a God of justice was an important one, but just as important in
the mind of the prophet was the promise that sins could be forgiven,
that payment transgressions would not last forever. Many years ago I
was having a conversation with my eight-year-old daughter at the supper
table about Martin Luther King, since she was studying about him in
school, and she asked what had happened to the man who killed him.
"He's still in jail," I told her. "Will he ever get out?" she asked.
"I don't think so," I replied. "He did a terrible thing, and I'm sure
he'll spend the rest of his life in jail." She thought about it for a
minute and said, "I don't think that's fair. I know he should be in
jail, but I think people should forgive him, too. He's a person just
like anybody else, and I don't think anyone should die in jail." Her
comments took be aback. I hadn't ever thought about the incarceration
of people like James Earl Ray from their own perspectives, only from the
perspectives of their victims. After years of reflection, I still don't
agree with my daughter's idea that no one should die in jail.
I'm happy to let the Charles Mansons of the world stay there
indefinitely. But the larger message about forgiveness was important,
and it reminded me that forgiveness is a value taught by Jesus and the
prophets, and it remains important today. In fact, I think it's fair to
say that our personal faith commitment can be measured in large part by
our ability to forgive those who have wronged us and those we love.
Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13 (first published 4 December 2005)
What is God like? How can we recognize the presence of God in the
world? To those whose primary thought of God is as one who punishes sin,
wars and natural disasters are fertile ground for finding God. Pat
Robertson thinks that God is behind many natural disasters, and even
behind terrorist attacks, and he's not the only one. Many of the people
who actually experienced the tsunami last year in Southeast Asia,
Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, and
the recent earthquake in Pakistan have also interpreted these disasters as
signs of God's punishment for sin, usually those of their own social or
religious group (i.e., lack of faithfulness), but sometimes those of their
neighbors (usually the nonreligious or at least nonobservant). The Bible
also frequently interprets history as God's manipulation of events in
order to punish one group or another. But is this really how God works,
or is it the primary way? Another way to envision God working in the
world is to follow positive developments: peace talks, cessation of war,
rising standards of living, rains that end periods of drought. The
psalmist, while perpetuating the idea that God uses adversity to punish
people, also sees God at work in more positive ways. In verse 12, he
says, "The Lord will give what is good, and our land will yield its
increase." The "good" here is probably rain in its proper season, an
absolute necessity in a society built on agriculture. The next verse
follows this thought more abstractly: "Righteousness will go before him,
and will make a path for his steps." The word translated "righteousness"
could also be rendered as "justice," and that rendering is probably more
appropriate when we think about God's dealings with large groups of
people, such as churches, nations, or the entire world. Justice is what
prepares the way for God to enter. Another way to say this is that where
God is present, so is justice. Some scholars suggest that a slight
modification be made to the second half of verse 13 to improve the
parallelism. If their suggestion is correct, then the insertion of one
letter in Hebrew (assumed to have fallen out at some point in the
transmission of the text) changes this part of the verse to read, "And
peace will be a path for his steps." The association between justice and
peace has already been made in verse 10, so this emendation of the text
may be justified. In any case, the last two verses of the psalm challenge
us to seek God in the positive. Rather than seeing God in the flood
waters of Katrina, we should look for God in the boats and helicopters
that rescued people from their rooftops. Instead of seeing God's
punishment in terrorist attacks, we should look for God providing comfort
to victims of hatred and violence. In place of envisioning a God who uses
armies to fight divine battles to impose justice through the force of
arms, we should imagine a God who uses courageous opponents of war to
stand up and say No, who sends peacemakers into harm's way to do all they
can do to minister to the victims of war, who works through negotiators
and diplomats to avoid war in the first place, and who inspires people to
work together to alleviate poverty and hunger. The way in which we see
God at work in the world directly affects how we live our lives as
followers of God. For myself, I choose to follow a God of justice and
peace, a God who has a special concern for the outcast and marginalized, a
God who suffers alongside people who suffer, and offers them comfort.
That's how I see God, and that's the God to whom I dedicate my life and my
passion.
2 Peter 3:8-15a (first published 4 December 2005)
Astronomers tell us that in a few billion years the sun will begin to
expend its nuclear fuel and will grow to such a size that it will engulf
all the inner planets, including the earth, before it explodes in a
violent supernova and eventually dissipates into the void of space.
Whether any humans, or our descendants, will be around to observe this
phenomenon is unknown, though perhaps unlikely, since according to the
fossil record few species persist for more than a few million years, at
the most. On the other hand, no species that has ever lived on the earth
has had the potential both to adapt and to modify its environment to meet
new challenges. When the planet grew cold during the last ice age, humans
didn't retreat into the warmth of the tropics. Instead, many of them used
fire and animal skins to combat the cold, indeed, to conquer its hold over
their lives. When the great ice sheets retreated, many animals that had
been adapted to extreme cold became extinct (some perhaps with human
help), but people simply shed their winter clothes and adapted to the new
situation. Today people live everywhere from the polar regions to the
equator, from the shores of the sea to more than two miles above sea level
in the Himalayas, Andes, and Rocky mountains. We have even developed the
capacity to survive for extended periods of time under the oceans and in
space. The threat of global annihilation seems remote to many people, but
is it really? Several times in the history of our planet major extinction
events have occurred. Scientists have identified five major events which
destroyed at least 65% of existing species, all of which occur at the
boundaries between two recognized geological periods: (1)
Ordovician/Silurian, (2) Devonian/Carboniferous, (3) Permian/Triassic, (4)
Triassic/Jurassic, (5) Cretaceous/Tertiary. The most disastrous such
event, at the end of the Permian period, destroyed approximately 95% of
marine life. The most recent event, at the end of the Cretaceous period,
killed off most dinosaurs (with the exception of birds) and heralded the
beginning of the Age of Mammals. Scientists have associated large meteors
crashing into the earth with several of these devastating events, and
similar extraterrestrial encounters may in fact be responsible for all
five of these incidents, as well as other smaller extinction events. In
his book The Sixth Extinction, paleontologist Richard Leakey argues
that the earth is currently undergoing a sixth major extinction event, but
one that is different from the earlier five, because it is being caused
not by natural events, like encounters with meteors, but by human
activity, such as hunting, poaching, global warming, and habitat
destruction. Today's reading from 2 Peter describes the end of the world
as coming with a great conflagration: "the heavens will be set ablaze and
dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire." A meteor certainly has
the capacity to do this, but, for the first time in history, so do humans.
Will our species destroy the earth with nuclear bombs? Will we slowly
poison and contaminate our planet so that it dies a slow death instead?
Or will we realize and correct the errors of our ways, both political and
environmental? If none of these things happen, will we be able to predict
and avoid, or at least decrease the effects of, an impact with a large
meteor? As much as we humans like to think that we are in control, the
fact of the matter is that we are not, and it is absolutely conceivable
that human life could be annihilated in a matter of hours as a consequence
of circumstances entirely beyond our control (read The Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy for a similar, albeit somewhat more fanciful,
scenario of the earth's destruction). In the light of this uncertainty,
how should we live our lives? The author of 2 Peter advises us to lead
lives of holiness and godliness, behaviors that will not only bring us
closer to God but which also have the potential to bring us closer to our
fellow human beings, thus reducing the likelihood of either nuclear war or
environmental catastrophe.
Mark 1:1-8 (first published 4 December 2005)
Star Wars, the first movie in the series to appear in 1977 (even though it was Episode 4), was given a new title when it was released as a boxed set in video and DVD: "A New Hope." The new hope of the title arose because a young man from an obscure planet came out of oblivion to confront the evils of the Dark Side and rescue a princess. The new hope resided in Luke Skywalker, but it transcended him as well, for it reminded the galaxy's inhabitants that the forces of light were at least as powerful as the forces of darkness, and they were available to all who had the courage to accept them and become disciplined in their ways. The Gospel of Mark contains no Christmas story, as do Matthew and Luke, nor does it contain a discourse on the preexistent Logos, like John. Instead, the author posits "the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ" in the preaching of John the Baptist, which the evangelist sees as an outgrowth of the prophecies of Isaiah 40. The gospel of Jesus Christ is good news in part because it shows that God has not forgotten God's people. The gospel is good news because it offers people forgiveness for their sins. Most of all, the gospel is good news because it promises something new and unprecedented. Whereas God in the past redeemed people and offered forgiveness, now for the first time God promised a special relationship with all those who sought the divine with all their hearts. John hints at this new relationship when he says, "I have baptized you with water, but [the one who is coming] will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." If baptism in water is symbolic of cleansing from sin, baptism in the Holy Spirit suggests a more thorough cleansing, as portrayed in Psalm 51, one of the few passages in the Hebrew Bible that mentions the Holy Spirit. Baptism in the Holy Spirit also hearkens back to the creation account of Genesis 1, where the Spirit of God hovers over the surface of the waters, so Holy Spirit baptism suggests a new creation. Finally, baptism in the Holy Spirit suggests an intimacy with the divine that had never before been contemplated. Many prophets arose in Israel over the centuries, and they had important, powerful messages to deliver to the people, but John's message was so unique, so innovative, so full of hope for a desperate generation, that it is no wonder that in the Q gospel, preserved in Matthew and Luke, Jesus portrays John as the greatest of the prophets. John pointed the people to a new hope, a hope that God would dwell with them and among them, cleansing them from their sins and transforming them into new creations. That's a hope that people still need to hear today.