Breaking the Middle Wall!

Christ came, Christ comes, and Christ will come, to break that “middle wall” that separates “us” from the “other” so that we, all God’s creation, may become one in Christ, the gift of God to God’s world.

“For God so loved the world …” (John 3:16) is the very essence of Christian faith that express that gift of God and Christian life evolving from that single Christ event; for this is the very axle in which our spirituality and our whole church life revolves around. It tells us, very plainly, of God’s initiative in our salvation, our wellness and wholeness, informing that we can neither earn, nor boast of our salvation, which comes as a free gift from God. This of course includes God’s continuous providence established well through our regular work and leisure activities in God’s world with God’s people.

The passage also suggests that we drop off our petty “self-righteousness” and stubborn “self-sufficiency” and serve God by caring for, and serving humbly, God’s creatures in God’s world. This serving involves that we break down the “middle wall” we keep erecting both in subtle and more obvious ways to justify our self-righteousness and self-sufficiency.

Let me close this comment with “An Accent” – just below – a little poetic story, a plea to break one brick from that middle wall. This story was published earlier in my poetry collection titled Stinging of the Scorpion and Other Poems (2006), page 30:

An Accent

To the pond behind my yard
I saw strolling a frog and a toad
They were there on that rainy day to breed
But the two soon began chatting their creed

Said the frog: “You a Bufonidae
You disturb my peace with your croak”
Protested the toad: “You a rascal Ranidae
You scare me to my death with your squeak”

Friendly chatting now turned to a dispute
They leapt across belittling each other
And there crept the water snake, moving softly
Swallowed the frog, proceeding next to the toad!

Rejuvenating the Prophetic Ministry

A sure way to enhance the relevance of the organized Christian community is to rejuvenate the prophetic ministry. I will briefly explain this that may need to be developed further elsewhere. These thoughts are offered here to initiate a conversation.

I taught (between 2000 to 2007) in the University of Alberta a course titled “Community Action and Introduction to Christianity”. In this course I explored Christianity as a “religious faith” that goes beyond “merely taking care of our individual souls”. In other words, Christian faith was understood there as a concern that takes “social transformation” as an integral component, and therefore I explored the different forms of “Christian social activism” that I classified into two broad categories: One, the “Charity Model” and the other, the “Justice Model”.

I found I had little or no difficulty in presenting the first one. Charity, or Christian love, is so central to the teachings of Jesus and Christian faith! Therefore, Christian communities in their personal and congregational lives, made sure, that they keep this component alive through their support to the “Food Bank” and other similar humane causes! And generally it works not too bad though they almost never critically evaluate either the programme or their charitable contribution! All that makes them feel good! Even in the global level that works well with all Christians!

If Christians did not accept that as an important element of their faith they would not have gone to the extent of “beatifying” Mother Teresa, “the saint of the gutters”, who died in 1997. But Archbishop Oscar Romero, died in 1980, who promoted the “justice model”, by becoming “a voice of the voiceless” which many Christian Activists identify as “Prophetic Christianity”, does not get that attention which “Mother Teresa” gets!

My task here is to high light the importance of this particular stance of Christian ministry! And that is what I mean by “rejuvenating prophetic ministry”. If Mother Teresa performed a difficult Christian Ministry then Archbishop Romero was involved in doing a dangerous Christian task!

Book of Amos alludes to three types of leadership – or three patterns of actions provided by these three types of leaderships. The three types of leadership that we encounter in that little book are royal, priestly, and prophetic, all well meaning, and also found elsewhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, are rooted and emerged from two very opposite perceptions of current events, or visions. So when Amos spoke his message, Amaziah, the priestly colleague of Amos, viewed the message as something that was disturbing the status quo, very subversive and undermining the orderly rule of Jeroboam, the King. (Cf. Amos 7:10-17) In that controversy and conflict, we see the priestly ministry of Amaziah expressing a wholehearted support and a total solidarity with the royal responsibilities of Jeroboam the King while Amos was in complete solidarity with the poor, or the people in the margin. So the prophetic ministry of Amos was in conflict with both the royal and the priestly ministries!

I say all these to confirm that prophetic concerns are part of the Christian Tradition that is rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures! And Jesus of Nazareth comes in that great line, paying with his death for starting a conflict with the priestly and royal ministries of his time!

My mission in this short space is to highlight the need to rejuvenate a Christian Ministry that resembles, in spirit, the prophetic ministry of Amos and Jesus of Nazareth. And I intend to do this without going into too many technical details about Amos, a prophet who lived eight centuries before Christ, or the book attributed to him. But Amos and the book containing his prophecies will be a fascinating springboard for those who want to explore, seriously, a prophetic mission in today’s world of intense consumerism that in many respects is not very different to the world of Amos! I believe to look at Amos is not only relevant and appropriate but also urgent in the present context where organized Christian community is becoming irrelevant in the eyes of many.

Temptations of Amaziah and the priestly order of Jesus’ time were conforming too much to the perceived order. I call that conformity to the dominant culture that benefited only those in the centre while creating cracks in the margin. Amaziah and the priests of Jesus’ time derived their visions primarily through their focus in the centre while Amos and Jesus considered the importance of looking at those in the margin – “the least among you”! And therefore their actions, which of course include what they said, came into a complete contradiction to the dominant culture! This is what happened in the case of Archbishop Oscar Romero too! So to “rejuvenate” the prophetic ministry would mean, to use Pauline phrases, “not to be conformed” but “to transform” the dominant culture with the values embedded in the. In that we see a prophetic ministry as counter-cultural!

The task of prophetic ministry is then nurturing, nourishing, and evoking a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us. This means the Church must have a voice about the current events – not just when someone is trying to remove the Gideon Bibles from the Hospital bedside! Church should become a watchdog! Church must observe and critique the political and social development that cause “marginality” of people that eventually leads to the need to establish “food banks” only to soften the sting but never removing the cause!

Justice issues must become “Church” issues, not simply left to smaller interest groups! But the whole Church must become a living organism that mobilizes the people to speak and act together for the benefit of all people! Our vision, and therefore action, should be related to current events.

Prophet is one who watching the current events proposes “a radical alternative” – “a complete reordering” – “a changed social system” – presuming “a changed set of social priorities and social appetites”. Prophet “anticipates nothing less than the dismantling of the presently-known world for the sake of an alternative world not yet embodied”. Prophet refuses to put “a band aid”!

To rejuvenate the prophetic ministry Christians must become “excessively conscious” of justice issues! Justice is one of the major themes of the biblical prophets. “He has told you, … what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) “… But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” (Amos 5:24)

Walter Brueggemann, a man who spent his entire life reading the biblical prophets defines biblical justice as “to sort out what belongs to whom, and to return it to them.” In my conclusion, then, I offer you an interesting story from Brueggemann who in turn borrows and re-tells to drive his definition of justice:
“I recently heard a story which speaks of forgetting to whom things belong. A very proper lady went to a teashop. She sat at a table for two, ordered a pot of tea, and prepared to eat some cookies, which she had in her purse. Because the teashop was crowded, a man took the other chair and also ordered tea. As it happened, he was a Jamaican black, though that is not essential to the story. The woman was prepared for a leisurely time, so she began to read her paper. As she did so, she took a cookie from the package. As she read, she noticed that the man across also took a cookie from the package. This upset her greatly, but she ignored it and kept reading. After a while she took another cookie. And so did he. This unnerved her and she glared at the man. While she glared, he reached for the fifth and last cookie, smiled and offered her half of it. She was indignant. She paid her money and left in a great hurry, enraged at such a presumptuous man. She hurried to her bus stop just outside. She opened her purse to get a coin for her bus ticket. And then she saw, much to her distress, that in her purse was her package of cookies unopened!”

Justice concerns are precisely a right reading of social reality, of social power, and of social goods.

Unseating the Dominant Culture!

Jeremiah’s perception was that God had picked him to the prophetic ministry even before his conception in his mother’s womb. The text (Jeremiah 1:4-10) very clearly affirms that Jeremiah’s ministry had nothing to do with any human agents. It is God who appointed him in that ministry.

The text also outlines the kind of task Jeremiah was to perform. He was expected “to pluck up and pull down, to destroy and to overthrow” before he was permitted “to build and to plant”. This is spoken in a metaphorical language; it means that Jeremiah was to promote a counter culture, challenge the conventional wisdom of his time. Jeremiah precisely performed those duties and suffered for doing so!

Jesus also did much plucking up, pulling down, destroying and overthrowing that made the synagogue leaders very angry! One morning there was a disturbance in a synagogue. This was due to Jesus doing something very different from the usual Sabbath doing (Cf. Luke 13:10-17). The problem here was Jesus healing on the Sabbath. Healing on the Sabbath was considered working on the Sabbath. Jesus’ actions that morning suggested a counter culture!

For the Hebrew people working on the Sabbath was wrong and sinful. But for Jesus showing mercy, no matter whether it is Sabbath, or not is the essence of spirituality. Hence, Jesus did more than a healing on the Sabbath. He unseated their ‘religious culture’ in order to put a new one.

Three concerns that emerge from that single act are noteworthy. First, he challenged the synagogue leader and the system that considered women as mere possessions, and often less important than even an ox that ploughed the fields, or the donkey that carried the load! In this system an ox or a donkey brought more money! These were days when the work, women performed were not taken into consideration. Second, the Hebrews, like many of us, often lived with a misplaced value system. Money and money producing machineries are more important than humans! Finally, they also mistook a set of do’s and don’ts as the only requirement for faith and spirituality. But for Jesus, mercy and kindness is the core of spirituality. Those who show mercy and compassion even when they did not belong to a religious community or practice religious faith are indeed in a spiritual journey.

In lifting the woman on the Sabbath morning, then, Jesus challenged the status quo, upsetting the religious people of his time, particularly the synagogue leader. In the Gospels, Jesus’ troubles are always when he challenged the “conventional wisdom” of the people of his time, disturbing the status quo, or acting out a counter culture.

Jesus’ expressions of spirituality and cultural inclinations that morning did an uncomfortable unseating of the dominant value! He made the circle wider. He added an additional gender, with it a new sound and a new smell to the new sphere, making it more multi-gender the chief characteristic of heaven.

Challenging the Conventional Wisdom!

Jesus had plenty of problems during the three years of his ministry. This was because he challenged the conventional wisdom of the people of his time. He, in other words, was disturbing the status quo. Jesus in his teaching and preaching provoked his listeners. Justifying his tendency to be provocative he said, “I came to bring fire to the earth” (Luke 12:49)! He came to provoke and disturb the comfortable people! Jesus was always a provocative disturber of the status quo. He was always pro-active in provoking his audience.

Often when Jesus spoke to people he hurt their pride, pricking their bloated ego, reducing the self-importance of the listeners, particularly those in the centre of the then society! Here, Jesus like his predecessors, the Hebrew prophets, “plucked, pulled down, uprooted and destroyed” - recurring words in the writings of Jeremiah - their sense of self-importance, something the prophets considered God’s doing before God made things new!

In the Hebrew Scriptures this is called the “prophetic inveighing”, a sport almost all the prophets practiced. And, of course, all prophets, even prior to Jesus, suffered much. They preached the Word of God through such provocation. And the Word of God, according to the Hebrew Prophetic Scriptures, frequently came not as sweet as honey as the psalmist often proclaimed. It was usually uncomfortable words, needing a lot of humility and a greater maturity on the part of the hearers. Reinhold Niebuhr about his own preaching, and all preaching said that preaching should “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”. Jesus precisely did that. He expected his followers also to do the same.

Earlier young Moses did the same. He too knew the consequences of disturbing the status quo. At one point, he even tried to plead with God to let him out of the hook and pick instead Aaron, the old bloke who is also a good orator! But, we know, that did not happen. Once God decides on someone, there is no escape! And there is also no freedom from pain in an authentic ministry! Bonhoffer said when God calls you he calls you to suffer and die! That did happen to Bonhoffer! It happened to Jeremiah. And it happened to Jesus. Jesus could not escape from the cross, though at the end he yelled at God – Eloi, Eloi lema sabachthani? “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)

God, in the Sacred Scriptures of the Christians, is not a sweet chocolate! God is not one who puts humans on a bed of roses! God does give to people chocolate and beautiful roses! But God gives above all a responsibility to become a prophet and a prophetic community to pluck up, to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow our prejudices, our narrowness, our smallness, our sense of self-importance, and so on before we build for God “the hymn of love”! Towards this, the same scriptures affirm, God gives God’s own Spirit!

Song writer James Manley boldly believed the Spirit of God is that which “breaks ancient schemes”, “stings with sand”, “calls us to live in an uncertain tomorrow”, “coaxes us to do what we do not like”, “wakes us from our slumber”, “gives us a new vision”, “stirs me from my placidness”, and much more.

Unpredictability of God!

Unpredictability of that “Being” I call God has frequently frustrated me. But there have been many, many moments my mind has been simply fascinated by that “More”. It is this fascination that prompts me to what the ancients called “praising God”! And my adoration of that Absolute Love at the edge where I stand breaks into this “un-poetic” prayer where my “soft amen” disintegrates with the souls of those perishing in hell, a human construct.

Your unpredictability like the wind
Blowing where it chooses to blow
That I hear very clearly the sound
But knowing not where it comes
Or whither her path would be
Increasing that sense of mystery to surround
You and your ways of dealing in the world
Making the thought of your eternal
Unchangeableness a very sure heresy
Leaving me to wonder, and wander after you
Like Moses journeying alone
In that Sinai wilderness
For so long before he gets a glimpse
Of your being in the burning bush

I, now, drive through the Albertan bush
Seeking like Jonah, Jeremiah, and Jesus
That restless rest that comes from resting
In your endless, ever-expanding
Being that is always becoming!

Authentic God Talk!

To say, “there is no God”, is not the worst thing in the world! But to believe and affirm God while denying the right of another human to live, at least, as much as I want to live is the nastiest.

This is the essence of Amos’ concern. Amos lived about 800 years before Jesus and has left behind a little book, which is part of the Bible that could be of great value for those promoting a religious culture.

Amos was very hard-hitting on those who limited all “God talk” to a “worship service” and “the Sabbath” (or a Holy Day) and went onto to live the rest of the week a self-centred, a selfish life.

The book of Amos is addressed to those “very religious” persons who have not integrated their religious faith to the values and culture of their daily living! These are the people who wait for the religious activities to be over so that they could go into another set of rules to fatten their wallet at the expense of the poor and the needy. These people, Amos said, “trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land”.

How do they do this? They do this, in his terms, by “making” the “ephah small and the shekel great”. In our terms the weight, or the volume decreases in the market place and the dollars you need to part-with goes up!

Amos observed the people. First, he saw how people behaved in the “religious spaces”. Second, he also saw how they conducted themselves in the “market places”. He did not find any connection between the two. One said something in side the four walls of the sacred space and went out to do something else.

This lack of correlation between religious profession and conduct in the day-to-day living invalidates the authenticity of the faith professed and does disservice to the religious cause!

Bertha, a Living Saint!

Bertha, now, is past 80 years! She had a foot operation at the age of 13. She, in her young age, never could run, or walk straight. In the early days before a neighbor friend of the family, a police officer, detected her foot problem, her parents thought that Bertha was imitating her grandfather’s walk.

The foot problem recurred when she was in her 50’s. She has undergone hip replacement 20 years ago. And both her knees are replaced. She still walks slowly and not straight. Her hip that was cemented needs to be further repaired. The doctor who fixed it years ago though have not verbalized feels that it is not worth the fixing! But not Bertha!

Bertha’s legs may be faulty but she has a clean heart. I have never seen her controlling any one. She does not lord over any of her associates. Her relationships are bonded in true affection and authentic love.

Bertha is always doing the humblest work. Bertha is ever ready to do the cups and dishes, whether in the church basement, or at the seniors’ centre, where she has a little apartment with things scattered all over, a sign of her outgoing and busy schedule.

She goes for bowling with other seniors. Not that she scores very many points. But she continues to go, keeping her self very active and enjoying the success of others! She always has plenty to talk about other people’s greatness.

She comes to church very regularly. She also drives for worship three other women from the senior center. She agreed to serve in the Vestry and shares her views and questions without hesitation. Whether she understands, or not, she encourages the minister, the study leader, with her presence.

I was quite pleased when she said that she did not understand what I had written to the Fairview Post! She does not pretend. On an earlier occasion too she said that what I had given for print went above her head. She may, with no malice, occasionally attribute that to my university background!

She reads a little. She watches the TV a little. She socializes much, and enjoying quite a bit of Bingo! She visits the drop in centre whenever there is an event. She sits with the seniors. She loves the young people, normally talking fondly about her grandchildren in 20’s and 30’s! Her daughters do not share her faith. They go to different churches. But she neither envies them nor is judgmental. She lives, with her dead husband in her heart, frequently sharing stories of Benny. She also regularly talks about her dead son who, if alive, would be of my age.

She works hard – has a garden during summer, knits, sows, bakes, cooks, inviting always others to share her beverage and food! She is a woman of great energy. She has overcome much prejudices others of her age and younger continue carrying, to live with. She believes that she inherited such openness and kindness from her father who homesteaded in the Eureka River district, running a store, mixing very freely with the Jews, who were hated at that time, and the aboriginals who were generally looked down by the settlers, and helping those who had nothing to eat!